Share and Follow
JERUSALEM — With all eyes focused on a brewing high-intensity war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the state of Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program has come under the microscope.
Iran’s sprawling aerial attack, with over 300 suicide drones and missiles, on Israel has raised pressing new questions about the Islamic Republic’s capability to fire a nuclear weapon at the Jewish state. For Israel, as the country’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, Iran with an atomic weapon would mean a “nuclear Holocaust” for the Jewish state.
On Sunday, after rejecting calls that the Biden administration was too soft on Tehran, the White House National Security Communication spokesperson, John Kirby told Fox News’ Shannon Bream that “Iran is so much dramatically closer to a potential nuclear weapon capability than they were before Mr. Trump was elected.”
David Albright, a physicist who is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital that “Iran would need a year or more to build a semi-reliable warhead for a ballistic missile and about two years to reconstitute the Amad Plan so as to be able to serially produce reliable warheads for ballistic missiles, i.e., have a fully developed nuclear weapons production complex.”
Iran’s regime pursued an atomic weapons program code named the Amad Plan from the late 1990s to early 2003.
Begin, who held cabinet member status in a previous Netanyahu administration, said the world “powers have failed” to stop Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon device.
The United States and other world powers reached an atomic accord with Iran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. The agreement merely imposed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and the uranium enrichment process that is a pre-condition for building an atomic bomb.
An Iranian military truck carries surface-to-air missiles past a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a parade on April 18, 2018, in Tehran. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
Devastating U.S., EU and U.N. energy and missile sanctions were imposed on Iran to compel the regime to agree to concessions. In 2018, former President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA because, he argued, it did not stop Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions and global terrorism. Trump’s re-imposition of sanctions on Iran would be termed his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
Begin said “the ‘maximum pressure’ policy was a good idea, and was actually implemented before 2015, with this or another degree of success. The problem was that the parties to the agreement did not react to Iran’s reaction to the renewed sanctions. Apart from IAEA reports and hollow warnings, Iran took the opportunity, broke the agreement and enriched uranium in an unprecedented quantity and pace.”
When questioned about Iran’s swarming drone and missile attacks on Israel, Begin said that “when a regime decides to launch a nuclear warhead (most probably on a ballistic missile warhead) against its enemy, it must be certain that it will reach its target. Reports since yesterday speak about a high percentage of failed launches of those missile types that Iran was trying to launch against Israel. So, in a peculiar way, this is an important (though negative) lesson they can draw from the attack. Another lesson would be the ability of Israel and its allies to thwart such attacks away from Israel.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei views Iranian nuclear achievements. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Reuters)
Jason Brodsky, the policy director of the U.S.-based United Against a Nuclear Iran, told Fox News Digital, “After the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran only took an incremental and modest expansion of its nuclear program. But after the Biden administration took office, it grew dramatically, especially enriching to 60%. Iran’s risk tolerance increased under the Biden administration because of its perceived desperation for diplomacy. That has resulted in failed negotiations and an adrift Iran policy.”
He said the “U.S. should support the E3 [Britain, France and Germany] triggering the snapback sanctions mechanism at the U.N. Security Council and participate in a joint military action with Israel against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran. This would build deterrence against Tehran which has been dangerously eroded over years.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital press query.
Reuters contributed to this report.
