Edited by: Fern Sidman
In his first major interview as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken repeated his warning that Iran could be on course to get enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon within months, according to a report in the Independent of the UK. He added that if Iran continues to lift restraints from the nuclear deal, it could be “a matter of weeks”.
Speaking to NBC News, Blinken said the US would be willing to once again comply with the 2015 nuclear deal if Iran does the same, as was reported by the Independent of the UK. The new Secretary of State said that the US would then work on a “longer and stronger” deal with allies that could possibly include other issues such as Iran’s development of advanced missile technology and its deployment of armed groups throughout the Middle East, according to the report.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Israel’s energy minister said it would take Iran around six months to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon, a timeline almost twice as long as that anticipated by a senior member of the Biden administration.
In a radio interview, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that the Trump administration “seriously damaged Iran’s nuclear project and entire force build-up.”
“In terms of enrichment, they (Iranians) are in a situation of breaking out in around half a year if they do everything required,” he told public broadcaster Kan. “As for nuclear weaponry, the range is around one or two years.”
Reuters reported that Israel is wary of the Biden administration’s intent to reenter the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and has long opposed the agreement, according to the Reuters report. Washington argues that the previous Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal backfired by prompting Iran to abandon caps on nuclear activities.
Last week, a VOA report indicated that Blinken had signaled that U.S. sanctions on Iran will remain in place for some time as Washington waits to see if Tehran verifiably stops violating a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers before potentially rejoining the deal that the Trump administration jettisoned.
VOA reported that week that Blinken said the U.S. is a “long way” from the point of fulfilling President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to rejoin the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran resumes compliance with it.
“Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts, and it would take some time, should it make a decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance, and (some time) for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So, we’re not there yet, to say the least,” Blinken said.
Biden has promised to offer Iran a “credible path back to diplomacy” if it returns to “strict compliance” with the JCPOA, in which it agreed to curb nuclear activities that could be diverted toward making nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief from world powers, as was reported by VOA.
Iran has been escalating its violations of JCPOA nuclear curbs since 2019 in retaliation for the 2018 withdrawal from the deal. Former President Trump unilaterally tightened U.S. sanctions against Tehran.
In his interview with the media over the weekend, Blinken did not offer a forthright response when asked if the release of detained Americans in Iran would be a part of any future negotiations.
He said: “Irrespective of… any deal, those Americans need to be released… We’re going to focus on making sure that they come home one way or another.”
Before his confirmation as Secretary of State, Blinken said that under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it would take Iran over a year to produce enough fissile material to make one weapon, as was reported by the Independent. During his Senate confirmation hearings last week, Blinken told lawmakers that it would now take “about three or four months, based at least on public reporting.”
The Independent reported that Iran began breaching the limits on the nuclear deal in 2019, a year after former President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal and began imposing sanctions on Tehran as part of a campaign of maximum pressure.
Iran has increased its production of fissile nuclear material, begun production of nuclear fuel enriched to 20 per cent purity, and ramped up its development of advanced centrifuges that can more efficiently process uranium ore for industrial or military purposes, as was reported by the Independent of the UK.
The report indicated that Iran said that it will not pursue nuclear weapons. Most western intelligence agencies say Iran abandoned a clandestine atomic arms program in 2003. But many non-proliferation experts have concluded Tehran is seeking to build up its nuclear technology capabilities with an eye toward quickly assembling nuclear weapons if it decided to in the future, as was reported by the UK paper.
According to a report on the Al Jazeera web site, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has rejected allegations reportedly made by Blinken that Tehran could be months away from developing enough “fissile material” for a nuclear bomb.
Zarif rejected those comments in an interview with CNN on Monday. “I think that is a statement of concern that is more addressed to the public opinion than to reality,” the foreign minister said, as was reported by Al Jazeera.
“Iran does not seek a nuclear weapon. If we wanted to build a nuclear weapon, we could have done it some time ago, but we decided that nuclear weapons would not augment our security and are in contradiction to our ideological views.”
Blinken said he was basing his projections on “public reports” and said the timeline would get “more acute” if Iran lifts more nuclear deal restraints, according to a full transcript of the NBC News interview.
“Now, the fissile material is one thing. Having a weapon that they can actually detonate and use is another,” Blinken said, according to the readout.
Al Jazeera reported that Iran began to loosen compliance with the deal after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018 as part of his administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy against the Iranian government.
The Biden administration says it will remove punishing sanctions on Tehran if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, according to the Independent of the UK report, but the sequencing of a restoration of the deal remains unclear. Both Blinken and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have said that they would return to compliance with the deal, but only if the other does so first.
Iran has been trying to achieve a return to the 2015 deal by publicly pressuring the new Biden administration. It has seized the cargo ship of a US ally and imprisoned a US citizen on charges of espionage, according to The Times.
Iran has now said it will not renegotiate the deal and placed blame on the US for its unilateral withdrawal, as was reported by Al Jazeera.
“The nuclear accord is a multilateral international agreement ratified by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which is non-negotiable and parties to it are clear and unchangeable,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh was quoted by state media as saying on Saturday.
“The United States needs to come back into compliance and Iran will be ready – immediately – to respond,” Zarif said. He added that, “The timing is not the issue. The issue is whether the United States, whether the new administration, wants to follow the old failed policies of the Trump administration or not.”
The Independent of the UK reported that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Friday during a forum sponsored by the United States Institute for Peace that the Biden administration is looking at a faster restoration of the deal than previously advertised to manage the incoming threats from Iran.
Sullivan also reiterated that Iran is closer to building a bomb than when President Trump decided to leave the deal in May 2018, according to the report.
“We are going to have to address Iran’s other bad behavior, malign behavior, across the region, but from our perspective, a critical early priority has to be to deal with what is an escalating nuclear crisis as they move closer and closer to having enough fissile material for a weapon… And we would like to make sure that we reestablish some of the parameters and constraints around the program that have fallen away over the course of the past two years,” Sullivan said.
Biden has named people involved in Iran nuclear deal negotiations to key positions within his administration. That includes Robert Malley, his new Iran envoy, and Wendy Sherman, his nominee for deputy secretary of state, according to report in the Independent of the UK report.
Malley was the lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and is currently tasked with bringing the United States and Iran into compliance with the Iran deal abandoned by Trump, according to a profile on Wikipedia. Previously, Malley was President and CEO of the International Crisis Group, a Washington, D.C. non-profit committed to preventing wars. Prior to holding that title, as was reported on Wikipedia, he served at the National Security Council under Barack Obama from February 2014 until January 2017. In 2015, the Obama administration appointed Rob Malley as its “point man” on the Middle East, leading the Middle East desk of the National Security Council. In November 2015, Malley was named as President Obama’s new special ISIS advisor.
In a statement released on the Iranian Foreign Ministry website, spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh rejected any flexibility on the part of the Iranians to changing any part of the 2015 agreement that the U.S. withdrew from in 2018, as was reported on the World Israel News web site.
“The UN Security Council Resolution 2231 is a multilateral international agreement ratified by Security Council, and is in no way negotiable and the parties are clear and unchangeable,” Khatibzadeh said.
His remarks on additional parties to the deal were in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments on Friday that new talks with Tehran should include regional players like Saudi Arabia, according to the World Israel News report.
“The United States has withdrawn from this agreement and Europe has been unable to maintain it,” Khatibzadeh said, adding that if the U.S. and Europe wanted to revive and maintain the nuclear deal, the only way is for the U.S. to return to the same terms and remove all of its sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic under former President Trump.
WIN reported that Macron had tried to push a hard line with the Iranians, telling the Al Arabiya news website during a media briefing in Paris: “Dialogue with Iran will be rigorous, and they will need to include our allies in the region for a nuclear deal, and this includes Saudi Arabia.”
Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates want to be involved in any new talks with Iran, sharing Israel’s concerns over Iran’s ballistic missile program that was not included in the original nuclear deal, as well as Iranian support for terrorist groups in the region, according to the WIN report.
Khatibzadeh called on Macron to “exercise restraint and refrain from hasty and ill-considered positions.”
VOA News reported that U.S. administrations have long criticized Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, its support for Islamist militias engaged in conflicts with the U.S. and its allies, its detentions of Americans as bargaining chips for prisoner swaps, and its poor human rights record.
The U.S. military said it flew a B-52H bomber over the Middle East last week to “showcase its commitment” to the security of U.S. allies in the region who have felt threatened by Iran.
The Associated Press said flight tracking data showed the bomber flew over the Persian Gulf after taking off from a U.S. base in Louisiana. It was the sixth such overflight since November, when then-President Trump authorized the sorties to deter Iran from attacking the U.S. or its allies while Washington was consumed in political turmoil stemming from that month’s presidential election. The military exercise also was the first since Biden took office, signaling that his administration intends to continue them as a regular practice, according to the VOA report.
Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special representative for Iran who left office last week, told VOA Persian he believes Blinken was “realistic” in assessing no quick U.S. return to the JCPOA. (Independent of the UK, Reuters, Al Jazeera & World Israel News)
