#Nuclear deal in tatters, #Iran edges close to weapons capability
Six years after the #Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord, Tehran is rapidly accumulating enriched #uranium, some of it very close to weapons grade. Experts fear that a #bomb could be a short dash away.
For the past 15 yrs, the most important clues about #Iran’s #nuclear program have lain deep underground, in a factory built inside a mountain on the edge of Iran’s Great Salt Desert. The facility, known as #Fordow, is the heavily protected inner sanctum of Iran’s nuclear complex & a frequent destination for international inspectors whose visits are meant to ensure against any secret effort by Iran to make #NuclearBombs.
The inspectors’ latest trek yielded the usual matrices of readings & measurements, couched in the clinical language of a #UN#nuclear watchdog report. But w/in the doc’s dry prose were indications of alarming change. In factory chambers that had ceased making enriched #uranium under a 2015 nuclear accord, inspectors now witnessed frenzied activity: newly installed equipment, producing enriched uranium at ever faster speeds, & an expansion underway that could soon double the plant’s output. #Iran
More worryingly, #Fordow was scaling up production of a more dangerous form of #nuclear fuel — a kind of highly enriched #uranium, just shy of #WeaponsGrade. Iranian officials in charge of the plant, meanwhile, had begun talking openly about achieving “deterrence,” suggesting that Tehran now had everything it needed to build a #bomb if it chose.
Fordow’s transformation mirrors changes seen elsewhere in the country as #Iran blows past the guardrails of the Iran nuclear accord.
6 years after the #Trump administration’s controversial decision to withdraw from the pact, the restraints have fallen away, one by one, leaving #Iran closer to #nuclear#weapons capability than at any time in the country’s history, according to confidential inspection reports & interviews w/ officials & experts who closely monitor Iran’s progress.
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