Iran launched its first direct military attack against Israel last night sparking tensions in the region as the Israeli military says Iran fired more than 100 bomb-carrying drones.
Iran had been threatening to attack Israel after an airstrike earlier this week widely blamed on Israel destroyed Iran's consulate in Syria, killing 12 people, including two elite Iranian generals.
It comes after an ex-UN weapons inspector warned in January that Iran would have enough uranium to make 12 nuclear bombs in just five months, as fears of the possibility of World War Three grow.
David Albright, an American physicist and a weapons expert, said the rogue state’s enrichment of uranium was a “hair’s breadth from 90 percent” - the level most desired to create a nuclear bomb. The chilling claim comes as Joe Biden announced that three American servicemen were killed and “many” were wounded in a drone attack by Iran-backed militia in Jordan.
They were the first US fatalities in months of strikes against American forces across the Middle East by Iranian-backed militias amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, increasing the risk of escalation.
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Mr Albright said it was now an “unfortunate reality” that Iran's scientists already possessed the knowledge to build the earth-shattering doomsday weapon. And he revealed that the state could have enough of the radioactive material within one month for six weapons. While after five months, he said this could double.
Writing in a report published on the Institute for Science and International Security, which he founded, Mr Albright said: “The unfortunate reality is that Iran already knows how to build nuclear weapons, although there are some unfinished tasks related to the actual construction of them.
“Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon. It could have enough weapon-grade uranium for six weapons in one month, and after five months of producing weapon-grade uranium, it could have enough for twelve.”
Mr Albright said condemnation of the country’s uranium enrichment programme had emerged as recently as December 28 last year from the United States and European allies. And this was due to Iran's decision to expand its output of enriched uranium from 60 percent to 90 percent. He said if this trend continued, Iran could be armed with dozens of nuclear weapons in the near future.
Mr Albright said: “This level of enrichment is a hair’s breadth from 90 percent enriched or weapon-grade uranium, the enrichment level most desired for making nuclear weapons. That is also the enrichment level used in Iran’s nuclear weapons designs, which it nearly perfected during its crash nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s, codenamed the Amad Plan.”
Mr Albright said Iran could attempt to ‘accelerate’ their efforts so they could create a few “crude nuclear weapons” in the first half of this year. Alternatively, he said they could continue with their ‘Amad nuclear weapons program’ which would allow them to “serially produce annually many warheads”, which may be more difficult and time-consuming.
He said: “The accelerated program can be accomplished in a matter of six months and would involve activities conducted in far smaller, more disguisable facilities. This path is a more assured way for Iran to establish itself as a nuclear weapons power while leaving little time for the international community to react.”
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The warning comes as tensions flare in the Middle East following the deaths of three US soldiers in the drone attack in northeast Jordan, near the border with Syria. Today, Joe Biden said the United States would “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing.”
He added: “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq." Since Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip began, U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have faced drone and missile attacks on their bases.
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The attack on Jordan marks the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the war. Biden, who was in Columbia, South Carolina, was briefed Sunday morning by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer.
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