On Sunday, the Iranian government announced it would no longer abide by most of the restrictions on uranium enrichment and production set in place by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a landmark 2015 treaty aimed at containing global nuclear proliferation. Iran’s announcement was widely seen as a reaction to the recent US assassination of Qassim Suleimani, a top-ranking Iranian military leader, but experts say it is part of a longer trend spawning from Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty in 2018.
Does that mean Iran is now racing to develop a nuclear weapon? Probably not, but the Islamic republic is closer to a nuke now than it has been in the last five years. Although Iran did not withdraw from the 2015 treaty altogether, it no longer recognizes restrictions on uranium enrichment levels, the number of uranium centrifuges it operates, or the amount of enriched uranium in its stockpiles. The door to becoming a nuclear-armed superpower was once bolted shut for Iran, but now it stands ajar.
This raises a troubling question: If Iran decides to walk through that door, how long would it take to build a nuclear bomb?
This is known as Iran’s “breakout” time and Miles Pomper, a nuclear arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, currently estimates it to be at least a year. The calculation is based on the amount of work the country would have to do just to get its nuclear infrastructure back to pre-2015 levels.
Estimating breakout times involves a lot of guesswork, because th ..
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