Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability

VIENNA — For the past 15 years, 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 and a frequent destination for international inspectors whose visits are meant to ensure against any secret effort by Iran to make nuclear bombs.

The inspectors’ latest trek, in February, yielded the usual matrices of readings and measurements, couched in the clinical language of a U.N. nuclear watchdog report. But within the document’s dry prose were indications of alarming change.

In factory chambers that had ceased making enriched uranium under a 2015 nuclear accord, the inspectors now witnessed frenzied activity: newly installed equipment, producing enriched uranium at ever faster speeds, and an expansion underway that could soon double the plant’s output. More worryingly, Fordow was scaling up production of a more dangerous form of nuclear fuel — a kind of highly enriched uranium, just shy of weapons grade. 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. Six 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 and interviews with officials and experts who closely monitor Iran’s progress.

While Iran says it has no plans to make nuclear weapons, it now has a supply of highly enriched uranium that could be converted to weapons-grade fuel for at least three bombs in a time frame ranging from a few days to a few weeks, current and former officials said. The making of a crude nuclear device could follow in as little as six months after a decision is made, while overcoming the challenges of building a nuclear warhead deliverable by a missile would take longer, perhaps two years or more, the officials said.

Iran recently has sought to dilute some of its highly enriched uranium, signaling, in the view of U.S. officials, that it is seeking to avoid a conflict by self-imposing limits on its supply of near-weapons-grade fuel. But Fordow’s machines are making highly enriched uranium at a faster rate than ever before, and the country’s combined stocks of uranium fuel continue to increase, records show. The trend is unmistakable: From interviews with IAEA officials at the nuclear watchdog’s Vienna headquarters and with more than a dozen current and former U.S. and European intelligence and security officials — many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters — the emerging view is one of Iran advancing slowly but confidently, accumulating the means for a future weapon while making no overt move to build one.

The collapse of the deal, meanwhile, has sharply curtailed the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s activity or investigate any reports of secret weapons activity, the officials and experts said. A U.S. official with knowledge of internal discussions at the IAEA’s governing board conceded that the nuclear watchdog is less capable now of detecting a nuclear breakout by Iran. Such an event could bring cascading consequences, from a Middle East arms race to a direct Israel-Iran conflict that could unleash a wider regional war, said the official.

For now, the U.S. official said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge.”

President Biden vowed early in his presidency to seek to restore or revamp the deal, but the administration’s efforts ran into a wall of political opposition at home and indifference from Iran. In December 2022, a video recording captured Biden acknowledging that the accord was “dead,” although the administration has not said so formally.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby recently acknowledged what he called the “futility” of the effort to revive the deal, and said the administration had “stopped putting energy and effort into it.” He said Biden remained determined to stop Iran from acquiring the ability to make nuclear weapons, but conceded that the United States has few fewer tools to achieve that ends.

“He would prefer — vastly prefer — to do that through diplomacy,” Kirby said a White House briefing in September. “But that’s just not a viable option right now.”

A broken pact spurs Iranian defiance

The 2015 Iran nuclear accord — negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency by the United States and five other world powers, plus the European Union, and known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — is technically still in effect, even if only as a shell. European countries continue to recognize the accord, and IAEA inspectors are allowed to visit Fordow and a few other facilities under preexisting agreements. But since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran has asserted its right to cancel any parts of the agreement it wants to ignore. In practice, that means almost all of it.

Under the pact, effective in early 2016, Iran agreed to accept severe curbs on its ability to make enriched uranium or other fissile material that could be used to make nuclear weapons. In exchange for sanctions relief, Iran also agreed to intrusive monitoring and inspections and to tight limits on its total uranium stockpile, ensuring that Tehran could not accumulate enough enriched uranium to produce even a single bomb.

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