Response to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Article on Iran’s Short Timeline to a Bomb

The author sets the three-to-five-week timeline observed in China’s unique case in direct comparison with longer estimated time spans produced specifically for Iran’s case by other experts (including us) without as much as acknowledging the vastly different circumstances between the Chinese and Iranian efforts. Right here, the author fails to mention his critical assumption that three to five weeks in Iran’s case mean that Iran has all nuclear weapons components, absent the WGU core, ready to be assembled, and the only step Iran would need to take is the conversion of WGU hexafluoride to metal, machining the core, and assembling all the components. No serious student of Iran’s nuclear effort asserts that.

If we indeed allow Iran to get to that point of having all the non-WGU components developed, produced, and ready to go, waiting to be assembled, and professionals in the arms control community still call Iran’s efforts a “de facto nuclear threshold state” instead of a nuclear weapons program in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, global nonproliferation efforts are seriously doomed. Fortunately, that dire situation has not yet been reached.

Further, the author uses findings from Iran’s nuclear archive to support his claim that Iran’s weaponization capabilities are sufficient to consider this case. Later, however, he references an open U.S. intelligence assessment to support the claim that sufficient weaponization capabilities did not exist before the JCPOA and instead “probably accelerated” after 2018.

Ironically, the author proceeds to use recent U.S. intelligence updates on the detection of secret weaponization activities to conclude that Iran will be able to build a nuclear weapon secretly. Irresponsibly, he asserts that Iran will be able to do so even “as it faces the risk of Israeli or US strikes on its nuclear facilities,” playing directly into the hands of the Iranian regime, which certainly wishes this were the case. This assertion effectively hands Iran the ultimate deterrent and maximum leverage it so greatly desires, in essence a capitulation. Following this logic, it would be futile for the West to continue to resist an Iranian bomb since the deterrent is already established. In reality, this is wishful thinking on Iran’s part and its nuclear program is actually quite vulnerable to attack or disruption, as is evident from past Israeli and Western sabotage actions and what is known about safeguarded facilities and secret ones from the AMAD Plan.

While we agree that Iran can build a crude nuclear weapon too quickly, in about six months, after a decision to do so, the regime risks being detected early after its decision to do so and all along its subsequent pathway to a bomb. Once it diverts safeguarded enriched uranium to make weapon-grade uranium, it will be detected within a few weeks at worst, perhaps on the day it diverts. As we discuss in our recent articles, in a worst case, where we assume that Iran can work in secret for four months on finishing the necessary nuclear weaponization steps without making any weapon-grade uranium, Iran would still need at least double the time posited in the BAS article after making sufficient weapon-grade uranium to have a finished nuclear device suitable for underground testing or crude delivery, but not missile delivery.

That time is more than sufficient for a devastating military response by Israel, hopefully supported by the United States and other allies. And a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, material, and equipment may only be a prelude to a far harsher strike against its economy, particularly its oil production, if Iran does not relent. Recent Israeli retaliatory actions have proved that Iran’s airspace, and all its infrastructure, is vulnerable to airstrikes and can be easily penetrated with advanced weapons, and Israel is uncannily aware of activities Iran is undertaking related to nuclear weapons development. So, the Iranian regime should think carefully about deciding to build nuclear weapons, because with its existing pathways to the bomb, detection is very likely to occur in sufficient time to do irreparable damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and its economy in short order.

David Albright is President and Founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. Sarah Burkhard is Research Associate at the Institute for Science and International Security. This article is published courtesy of the Institute for Science and International Security.