Newsflash: Iran Wants a Bomb
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AP News/WSJ
Newsflash: Iran Wants a Bomb
Wall Street Journal-June 19th2024
Evidence keeps accumulating that Tehran is fast pressing ahead with its nuclear ambitions, and if you’re at all surprised by this you must work in the Biden Administration. The latest data points: U.S. and Israeli officials reportedly believe Iran may be developing computer models necessary to build a bomb, while the United Nations’s chief nuclear watchdog admits no diplomatic obstacles stand in the mullahs’ way.
The story about Iran’s possible computer modeling, as reported in Axios and if true, would signal the regime is serious about developing a bomb at a time of its choosing. The U.N. recently concluded that Iran holds a stockpile of some 142 kilograms of 60%-enriched uranium—that the outside world knows or can make an educated guess about—and is growing its hoard. Enriching that uranium to weapons-grade will be straightforward, and quick, once it makes the decision to move.
The new intelligence suggests Tehran is starting work on the missiles necessary to deliver the half-dozen or so atomic bombs it could produce with that uranium. Veteran Iran watcher Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies warned about this in an interview with Elliot Kaufman in these pages in April, when he said “I have been led to believe that Iran’s weaponization activities have begun” and noted that computer modeling would be an important element of Iran’s nuclear-weapons push. He has good sources.
The Obama Administration tried to talk Iran out of its nuclear ambitions with the 2015 nuclear deal. The agreement at best promised to slow but not stop Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program and in practice didn’t even do that. President Biden’s attempt to resurrect that deal—after the Trump Administration abandoned it in favor of tougher sanctions—collapsed in 2022. The Administration’s chronic kid-gloves treatment of Iran suggests some forlorn hope may live on in Washington.
So it’s useful, if not surprising, that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has issued a reminder that the 2015 deal “means nothing” now. Tehran must agree with his view, since the computer modeling Iran is believed to be engaged in was explicitly barred by the 2015 deal.
Mr. Grossi was speaking to a Russian newspaper and says he hopes the Kremlin “can influence compliance with a peaceful nuclear order” in Iran in the absence of a formal deal. Good luck with that, since Vladimir Putin would like the distraction and danger a nuclear Iran would pose for the U.S. and its allies.
President Biden seems to hope that, as in so many other areas, he can “park” the Iran nuclear problem at least through November’s election. Given the progress the mullahs are making, the choice may be to risk Tehran’s ire with action now, or risk having to explain to Americans sooner or later how Iran came to build a bomb on Mr. Biden’s watch.
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