As Hopes for Nuclear Deal Fade, Iran Rebuilds and Risks Grow

WASHINGTON — Over the past 20 months, Israeli intelligence operatives have assassinated Iran’s chief nuclear scientist and triggered major explosions at four Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, hoping to cripple the centrifuges that produce nuclear fuel and delay the day when Tehran’s new government might be able to build a bomb.

But American intelligence officials and international inspectors say the Iranians have quickly gotten the facilities back online — often installing newer machines that can enrich uranium at a far more rapid pace. When a plant that made key centrifuge parts suffered what looked like a crippling explosion in late spring — destroying much of the parts inventory and the cameras and sensors installed by international inspectors — production resumed by late summer.

One senior American official wryly called it Tehran’s Build Back Better plan.

That punch and counterpunch are only part of the escalation in recent months between Iran and the West, a confrontation that is about to come to a head, once again, in Vienna. For the first time since President Ebrahim Raisi took office this summer, Iranian negotiators plan to meet with their European, Chinese, and Russian counterparts at the end of the month to discuss the future of the 2015 nuclear agreement that sharply limited Iran’s activities.

Read more on the original:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/21/us/politics/iran-nuclear-standoff.html