{"id":291615,"date":"2024-07-21T06:30:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-21T06:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291615"},"modified":"2024-07-22T07:40:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T07:40:08","slug":"blinken-says-irans-nuclear-weapon-breakout-time-is-probably-down-to-1-2-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291615","title":{"rendered":"Blinken says Iran\u2019s nuclear weapon breakout time is probably down to 1-2 weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood \u2013 CNN July 19, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that Iran\u2019s breakout time \u2013 the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon \u2013 \u201cis now probably one or two weeks\u201d as Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The assessment marks the shortest breakout time that US officials have ever referenced and comes as Iran has taken steps in recent months to boost its production of fissile material.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we are now is not in a good place,\u201d the top US diplomat said at the Aspen Security Forum Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out, instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t produced a weapon itself, but that\u2019s something of course that we track very, very carefully,\u201d Blinken added.<\/p>\n

Blinken said the policy of the US is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and that the administration would prefer to stop that from happening through diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Over a year ago a top US Defense Department official said that Iran could now produce \u201cone bomb\u2019s worth of fissile material\u201d in \u201cabout 12 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration engaged in more than a year of indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in 2018 under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Those efforts collapsed in late 2022, as the US accused Iran of making \u201cunreasonable\u201d demands related to a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN nuclear watchdog, into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites. In the months that followed, the administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was \u201cnot on the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s new president has suggested they are open to engagement with the West. However, a senior State Department official told CNN that they no longer believe that there can be a return to the nuclear deal because Iran has engaged in too many escalatory acts in the years since talks broke down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a very different world, a lot of time has elapsed, Iran has done a lot of things that make a return to JCPOA non-viable,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

The State Department also said that there is no anticipation that the recent election in Iran will change the country\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no expectations that this election will lead to a fundamental change in Iran\u2019s direction or its policies,\u201d State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said earlier this month. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s not the president that has the ultimate say over the future of Iran\u2019s policy; it is the supreme leader, and of course we have seen the direction that he has chosen to take Iran in.\u00a0 Obviously, if the new president had the authority to make steps to curtail Iran\u2019s nuclear program, to stop funding terrorism, to stop destabilizing activities in the region, those would be steps that we would welcome. But needless to say, we don\u2019t have any expectations that that\u2019s what\u2019s likely to ensue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel is probably too deeply entangled in conflicts closer to home \u2013 with Hamas, Hezbollah and now the Houthi \u2013 to launch a preemptive strike on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. Will the U.S.? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":35596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291617,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291615\/revisions\/291617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}