As the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers eroded over the years, Iran expanded and accelerated its nuclear program, shortening the time it would have to build a nuclear bomb if it wanted to, although it denies it is willing to do so.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander said on Thursday that Iran may review its “nuclear doctrine” amid threats from Israel. While it’s unclear exactly what he means, and the term tends to refer to nuclear-weapon states other than Iran, here’s an overview of Iran’s position.

Trade failure and breakout times

The 2015 deal imposed tight limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran. It slashed Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, leaving only a small amount of enriched uranium with a purity of up to 3.67 percent, well below weapons-grade purity of about 90 percent.

The U.S. said at the time that the main goal was to extend the time it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb – the biggest hurdle in its weapons program – to at least a year.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal and reimposed sanctions on Tehran, causing a sharp drop in its oil sales and hammering its economy. In 2019, Iran began violating limits on its nuclear activities and then went well beyond them.

It has now violated all of the deal’s key limits, including where and with what machinery, how far uranium can be enriched and how much material can be stored.

The stockpile of enriched uranium under the deal stood at 202.8 kilograms, up from 5.5 tons in February, according to the latest quarterly report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, which inspects Iran’s enrichment plants.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s theoretical definition, Iran is currently enriching uranium to a purity of up to 60% and has enough material enriched to that level to be used to build two nuclear weapons if further enriched.

That means Iran’s so-called “breakout time” — the time it would take to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb — is close to zero and could be just weeks or days.

The IAEA inspected Iran’s declared enrichment plants: an above-ground plant and a larger underground plant at the Natanz complex, and one buried inside a mountain in Fordow.

With Iran halting implementation of elements of the deal, the IAEA can no longer fully monitor Iran’s production and stockpiles of centrifuges, uranium enrichment machines, or conduct rapid inspections. This has sparked speculation about whether Iran may be setting up a clandestine enrichment plant, but there are currently no concrete signs.

weaponized

Beyond uranium enrichment, there’s also the question of how long it would take Iran to produce the rest of a nuclear weapon if it wanted to, and potentially make it small enough to fit into a delivery system like a ballistic missile. This is more difficult to estimate because it is less clear how much knowledge Iran possesses.

U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency believe Iran has a coordinated nuclear weapons program that was halted in 2003. The International Atomic Energy Agency found in a 2015 report that Iran carried out weaponization efforts, some continuing as late as 2009.

Iran denies ever having a nuclear weapons program, although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said world leaders “wouldn’t be able to stop us” if it wanted to.

Estimates of how long it would take for Iran to weaponize typically range from a few months to about a year.

In March 2023, Gen. Mark Milley, then the top U.S. military officer, testified to Congress that it would take Iran several months to weaponize, but he did not disclose the basis for that assessment.

“Iran’s public statements regarding its technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons only increase the director-general’s concerns about the correctness and completeness of Iran’s safeguards statements,” the IAEA said in its quarterly report in February.

Diplomats said the statements included a television interview by Iran’s former nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, in which he compared producing nuclear weapons to making cars and said Iran knew how to make the required parts. .

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)