Despite Iran’s development of a large stockpile of enriched uranium that cannot serve any peaceful purpose, US intelligence agencies continue to differ with more foreboding Israeli assessments that the Islamic Republic is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, according to a Thursday report.
According to The New York Times, the Mossad believes that Iran could assemble a nuclear weapon within 15 days, while US assessments are more conservative, estimating it would take Tehran several months or up to a year to make a bomb, and that it is not currently actively pursuing one.
Citing intelligence and other US officials, The report said the current US assessment has not changed since the issue was last evaluated in March, even though Israel has since launched an extensive bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, research centers and scientists, along with its ballistic missile program and other military infrastructure.
Senior US intelligence officials cited in the report, however, that Tehran could decide to actively break out to the bomb should Israel assassinate Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel has not ruled out killing Khamenei, with Defense Minister Israel Katz saying on Thursday at the site of an Iranian strike on a hospital that the Iranian leader “cannot continue to exist.”
A second possible instigator of an Iranian breakout, mentioned in the report, would be a US attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Fordo.
The site, located north of the city of Qom, is buried deep underground underneath a mountain, leading experts to assess that only bunker buster bombs, possessed exclusively by the US, could destroy the facility. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on Thursday that Israel could destroy Fordo without US assistance.
The White House said on Thursday that US President Donald Trump would decide within the next two weeks whether to join the Israeli offensive against Iran.
The announcement came following an intelligence briefing in which CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Iran was very close to attaining an atomic bomb, the report said, noting that he was echoing the Mossad assessments.
While some senior US officials, including Vice President JD Vance, said that new information has come in since intelligence agencies declared in March that Iran was not seeking a weapon, officials were quoted as saying that Vance was, in fact, referring to new analysis of existing information.
On June 13, Israel launched a campaign of airstrikes in Iran to decimate its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which Jerusalem characterized as an imminent, existential threat. Iran has responded with deadly barrages of ballistic missiles at civilian population centers and military targets in Israel.
Iran, which vows to destroy Israel, has always denied any ambition to develop nuclear weapons, but its enrichment levels reach far beyond the quantity for any civilian purpose, and the IAEA says it has obstructed inspectors from visiting its nuclear sites.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded.
In Israel, 24 people have been killed and thousands have been wounded by Iran’s ballistic missile attacks. Massive damage has been caused to residential areas in several of the strikes.