Iran Mullahs Drastically Speed Up Their Nuclear Program, US Administration Sits Idly By
by Majid Rafizadeh • June 22, 2024 at 5:00 am
The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently issued an unusually jarring warning, highlighting a development in Iran's nuclear program. IAEA inspectors confirmed that, for the first time, Iran has commenced the process of feeding uranium gas into three cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility.
By waiving sanctions on Iran, the Biden administration has effectively provided financial support amounting up to an estimated $100 billion to the mullahs. Worse, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to Tehran's destabilizing and aggressive policies, both within the region and without.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has explicitly articulated his vision for Israel's destruction in his 416-page book, Palestine. This manifesto serves as a detailed guide to eliminating Israel, often referred to in Iran as "The Little Satan," and vehemently condemns the United States, referred to as "The Great Satan."
By acquiring nuclear weapons, the regime could also equip its proxies -- Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis -- with these weapons to use against Israel. Using its proxies as its "human shields" allows Iran's regime to maintain plausible deniability, so it can continue hiding behind them while escalating the real threat to Israel, which is Iran itself.
The Biden administration needs urgently to take decisive action to curb Iran's aggressive nuclear advancements. The US needs to stop its current practice of waiving sanctions on Iran and start reimposing -- and enforcing -- severe sanctions on the country's oil and gas industry. The US also needs to cut off the financial flow to the regime by imposing secondary sanctions: any country that does business with Iran may not do business with the United States.
US failure to act will only rapidly lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, significantly upending global stability and providing a potential vacuum for America's adversaries to fill.
The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently issued an unusually jarring warning, highlighting a development in Iran's nuclear program. IAEA inspectors confirmed that, for the first time, Iran has commenced the process of feeding uranium gas into three cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. These cascades, which consist of multiple centrifuges working in unison, increase the efficiency of uranium enrichment by spinning the uranium gas at extremely high speeds, allowing Iran to enrich it at a much faster rate and significantly reducing the time required to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran is already enriching uranium to 84%, alarmingly close to the 90% enrichment level of weapons-grade uranium. Iran therefore may well be on the brink of acquiring the necessary material for nuclear bombs.
