Due to international pressure and a weak regime… Reasons for Iran’s reluctance to produce its first nuclear bomb

Iran came perilously close to enriching weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb, but the regime did not cross the critical threshold to declare that it had built a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear threshold

U.S. Fox News confirmed that for nearly two decades Iran has been making great efforts to join countries that possess atomic weapons but have not yet crossed the nuclear threshold.

“If there is reason to believe that a number of disincentives have stopped developing their weapons, they will revert to targeted attacks by the United States and Israel, who are obviously very concerned about the mullahs’ regime not producing nuclear weapons,” said Lisa Daftari, an expert on Iran.

“Israel is reported to have carried out at least twenty targeted operations on the Iranian regime in the last fifteen years or so, including drone strikes and cyberattacks, which may be a major reason these weapons are not being produced, and we cannot reduce the international pressure on the Iranian regime,” Daftari said.

“These pressures have been relieved by the current administration which, while moving away from the nuclear deal, still hopes to revive some form of normalization deal with Tehran, or else where there is constant, targeted pressure on the Iranian regime will bear fruit.”

“Sanctions and economic and political isolation have made the Iranian regime vulnerable and a bold people courageous enough to take to the streets,” she said.

Iranian movements

NNA said Kamal Kharazi, a senior adviser to the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted last year that “Iran is on the nuclear threshold, and this is not a secret thing,” according to a 2022 report in the state-controlled Tehran Times.

Just this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that the Iranian regime has enriched 84% of its pure uranium and 6% is shy of 90% of its enriched uranium required to make a nuclear weapon, she said.

It added that the Iranian regime is testing the resolve of the United States and other world powers that have repeatedly said they will not allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, as Israel views Tehran’s nuclear weapons program as an existential threat because Tehran has repeatedly stated it is seeking to eliminate it.

“It is an open question whether Khamenei wants to die like the father of the Shia atomic bomb or as the person who kept the Islamic Republic on the nuclear path without provoking war or pushing the trigger,” said Bahnam Ibn Talbow, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.