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While Iran’s perceived nuclear capabilities are a key driver of the country’s ongoing hostilities with Israel, there is much that remains unknown about Tehran’s nuclear program and some experts argue the program’s true endgame remains unclear.
According to Israeli officials, the primary goal of the 13 June attacks on Iran, which started the ongoing air war between the countries, was to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel accuses the Islamic Republic of Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes as an “existential threat to Israel”.
However, the Iranian regime has always denied claims it’s pursuing nuclear weapons, saying its program is aimed at “developing civilian nuclear power”.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly emphasised his 2003 fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) against the development of nuclear weapons.
Contradictory reports on Iran’s nuclear plan
Dara Conduit, a political science lecturer at Melbourne University, told SBS News that it’s “very difficult to know” what’s motivating Iran’s nuclear program.
“The best information we have is the US Intelligence Assessment that was released in March, which said that there was no evidence that Iran was attempting to make a nuclear weapon.”
Then, Gabbard said the US intelligence community didn’t believe Iran was building a nuclear weapon. On Saturday, she said her testimony had been taken “out of context” and provided a new appraisal.
“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly,” she said.
However, a source with access to US intelligence reports told Reuters the March assessment had not changed.
They claimed the country’s spy services estimated it would take Iran up to three years to develop a warhead capable of hitting a target of its choice.
The enrichment question
Iran’s civilian nuclear program began in the 1950s with US support under the Atoms for Peace initiative.
That support was ended by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after which Iran started to work with Russia and China on nuclear projects.
It wasn’t until 2002, when information about undeclared enrichment sites in central Iran was brought to light, that the world became aware of significant advancements of Iran’s nuclear program since the revolution.
However, there was no official statement on the country’s enrichment capability until 2006, when then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iranian scientists had successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 per cent.
Most civilian nuclear reactors require 3 to 5 per cent enrichment.
While a nuclear weapon can be made with uranium that’s only 20 per cent enriched, nuclear-armed nations usually use about 90 per cent enriched uranium, ANU Department of Nuclear Physics researcher Kaitlin Cook wrote in a recent Conversation article.
A day before Israel’s strikes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was able to produce 34 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent each month.
According to the IAEA, Iran also had enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade to build nine nuclear bombs if it were further enriched.
“The problem is that they are enriching uranium to a level that is far higher than what would be required for a civilian nuclear capacity,” Conduit said.
“Why are they doing that? We don’t know.
“It could be that the regime is intending to pursue a nuclear weapon, or it could be that the regime is trying to strengthen its hand [for] when it does get back to the negotiating table.”
‘The first step towards the crisis’
The IAEA’s June assessment found that Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations and it could not declare the country’s nuclear program was “exclusively peaceful”, as per the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal.
In 2015, Iran and the “P5+1 group” — comprising the US, Russia, China, France, the UK, and Germany — reached a deal that committed signatories to limit their nuclear programs in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
As part of the deal, Iran agreed that for 15 years it would enrich uranium only up to 3.67 per cent.
However, in 2018, a first-term Donald Trump decided to exit the agreement negotiated under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he said at the time.
Conduit said Trump’s decision was made despite the fact that “Iran was upholding its side of the agreement”.
“I guess that was the first step towards the crisis that we see Iran in now.”
Enrichment negotiations halted by Israeli strikes
Following Trump’s re-election in 2024, he said he was looking to make a new deal with Iran.
In recent months, Iranian and American representatives have held several rounds of negotiations, mainly focusing on enrichment.
During the negotiations, the Iranian foreign minister said his nation would not accept suspending uranium enrichment completely, something US officials have demanded.
Israel’s strike on Iran effectively halted that round of negotiations.
On Saturday, Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, told German newspaper Bild that his country’s strikes had already delayed Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon by “at least two or three years”.
In a statement on Friday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi confirmed some damage to various nuclear facilities in Iran, but didn’t clarify the precise impacts on the country’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.
