Iran has expanded its most sensitive nuclear production site in recent weeks. And for the first time, some leaders are dropping their insistence that

As Iran Picks a President, a Nuclear Shift: Open Talk About Building the Bomb

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2024-06-28 01:30:04

Iran has expanded its most sensitive nuclear production site in recent weeks. And for the first time, some leaders are dropping their insistence that the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

David E. Sanger has covered the diplomatic and covert efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear progress for more than 25 years. Farnaz Fassihi reports on the United Nations and the Iranian political scene.

With the rest of the world distracted by wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Iran has moved closer than ever to the ability to produce several nuclear weapons, dramatically bolstering the speed at which it can produce nuclear fuel in recent weeks inside a facility buried so deep that it is all but impervious to bunker-busting bombs.

The sharp technological upgrade goes hand in hand with another worrisome change: For the first time, some members of Iran’s ruling elite are dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. Instead, they are publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb, arguing that recent missile exchanges with Israel underscore the need for a far more powerful deterrent.

In interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials and with outside experts, the cumulative effect of this surge appears clear: Iran has cemented its role as a “threshold” nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it.