The Old Lies About Iran and Nuclear Weapons Just Won't Die

Iran is not in a position to “make a bomb within days.”

Walter Russell Mead offers up more clownish fearmongering:

Throughout the Obama era, and again during the Biden years, the defeatists and Iran apologists whispered and spun. At the same time, the bloody-fingered allies of the ayatollahs wrought havoc across the Middle East, subjugating Lebanon, subverting Iraq, wrecking Syria, immiserating Yemen and equipping Hamas for its ruinous war. Meanwhile, the mullahs continued their drive for nuclear weapons and missiles. According to one prominent analyst, they could make a bomb within days and a respectable nuclear arsenal within a few weeks or months.

As usual, Mead’s column is filled with half-truths and lies. He refers to an Iranian drive for “nuclear weapons” that does not exist. He has repeated this lie many, many times. Iran is not in a position to “make a bomb within days.” While it has enriched uranium to 60% purity in response to Israeli sabotage and assassination attacks, Iran has not enriched any of its uranium to weapons-grade. Iran still has no nuclear weapons program (and hasn’t had anything like one for 21 years).

Even if the Iranian government decided tomorrow that it wanted to have nuclear weapons, it would probably take them about two years to make some. In the event that Iran did acquire a handful of nuclear weapons, it would keep them as a deterrent against possible attack by the U.S. and Israeli governments that constantly threaten to attack them. The surest way to convince the Iranian government to start building nukes is to threaten them directly. If you want Iran to choose that path, then by all means listen to Mead.