Iran’s nuclear development program is rapidly approaching the capability to build an atomic weapon, a former official of the International Atomic Energy Association said on Monday.
“I believe that if certain arrangements are done, it could even go down to two weeks,” the Times of Israel quoted Olli Heinonen as saying of Iran’s production of weapons-grade uranium. “So there are a lot of concerns out there that Iran can hopefully now address.
The Israeli newspaper reported a recent study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which stated that Iran could muster enough uranium by converting all of its 20-percent enriched stockpile within a month or two.
Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said Iran’s nuclear program has reached the point of no return – “in a certain way.”
“But you [Iran] still don’t have a nuclear weapon,” he added, explaining that preparation of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb would take another month or two, “assuming that someone has all the knowledge. It would take a year to assemble a nuclear weapon that can be delivered with a ballistic missile, Heinonen said.
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