Ehud Barak: It’s too late for a surgical attack to block Iran becoming a nuclear power

“This summer, Iran will turn into a de-facto threshold nuclear state,” former Prime Minister Ehud Barak maintained in a long article run by TIME on July 26. That is, Iran will have enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear device and the technology to make it a weapon.

In 2018 they were some 17 months away from that threshold; today they are probably just 17 days away, said Barak, ignoring the solemn US and Israeli vows to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. Although Tehran insists that it is bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT0 – to evade heavier sanctions – after more than 20 years of trying, Iran is about to cross the point of no return in becoming a member of the “nuclear club. This has been the mullahs’ ambition all along.

All they need for “breakout” is to shift the enrichment of uranium 238 isotope from 60pc to 90 pc, i.e., weapons grade, Barak said. This takes less time and effort that the earlier enrichment processes, requiring smaller spaces, likely very deep tunnels beyond the reach of any weapon. Tehran would then claim that any attack conducted against those sites justified its contention that its nuclear capability was necessary for self-defense. READ MORE