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IAEA: Iran lacks sufficient uranium for nuclear bomb

Meanwhile, the rial fell to a new low against the dollar as its economy struggles under the coronavirus and new U.S. sanctions.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Oct. 2, 2019. Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA via Wikimedia Commons.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Oct. 2, 2019. Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA via Wikimedia Commons.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Grossi told the Austrian daily Die Presse on Saturday that Iran still lacks enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.

This, said Grossi, is in spite of the fact that “the Iranians continue to enrich uranium, and to a much higher degree than they have committed themselves to. And this amount is growing by the month,” according to Reuters.

Regarding how long it would take for Tehran to produce a nuclear weapon, Grossi said, “In the IAEA, we do not talk about breakout time. We look at the significant quantity, the minimum amount of enriched uranium or plutonium needed to make an atomic bomb. Iran does not have this significant quantity at the moment.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported, the Iranian rial fell to a new low against the dollar on Saturday as its economy struggles under the coronavirus and new U.S. sanctions.

The dollar was selling for 304,300 rials on the unofficial market, according to the foreign-exchange site Bonbast.com.

“I’m scared of what’s going to happen now,” Miri Bar-Halpern, a Jewish psychology lecturer at Harvard Medical School, told JNS. “I can already predict the backlash.”
The country’s next government will depend on whether its political leaders can reconcile their competing commitments, or whether voters will again be asked to resolve a deadlock that negotiations could not.
“They will push legislation very hard to end the Iran war, and it’s not inconceivable that they could get a fair amount of Republican support for that,” William Galston of Brookings told JNS.
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said that the Knesset must form “a strong national right-wing government.”