US expresses concerns about Iran’s intention to develop a nuclear weapon
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the US is concerned that Iran may develop a nuclear weapon within weeks.
” This certainly worries us,” Psaki said during a press conference, adding that the time needed by Iran to produce a nuclear weapon decreased about a year ago.
Earlier on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the US remains convinced that reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is the “best way” to prevent Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb.
“We continue to believe that a return to the agreement would be the best way to respond to Iran’s nuclear challenges, and to ensure that Iran, which is already behaving so aggressively, does not have a nuclear weapon,” Blinken told the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
“We tried the other proposal, which is to withdraw from the agreement and try to put more pressure on it, and we saw the result,” which is a “more dangerous nuclear program,” Blinken added.
The US minister indicated that the time needed by Iran to produce enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon was reduced to “a few weeks” after the US withdrawal from the agreement, while the period was more than a year before that.
Iran is participating in these negotiations to revive the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with France, Germany, Britain, Russia, and China directly, and the US indirectly, but their messages pass through other participants and the EU, the coordinator of the talks.
