The Biden administration is worried Iran could respond to the recent reduction of its conventional military capabilities by rushing to construct a nuclear weapon, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned on Sunday.
“What I found over the last four years is that when good things happen, like Iran being weaker than it was before, there are frequently bad things lurking around the corner,” Sullivan told CNN host Fareed Zakaria.
“If you’re Iran right now and you’re looking around at the fact that your conventional capability has been reduced, your proxies have been reduced, your main client state has been eliminated, Assad has fallen, it’s no wonder there are voices saying: ‘Hey, maybe we need to go for a nuclear weapon right now,’” the outgoing U.S. official continued.
“They’re saying it publicly, in fact. They’re saying: Maybe we have to revisit our nuclear doctrine. A doctrine that has said: We’ll have a civilian nuclear program and certain capabilities, but we’re not going for a nuke,” Sullivan noted. “It’s a risk we’re trying to be vigilant about now.”
Sullivan said he was personally briefing President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration on the risks associated with a weakened Iran, adding that he has also discussed the issue with officials in Jerusalem.
Last week, the United Kingdom, France and Germany called on Tehran to “reverse its nuclear escalation,” claiming that there is no “credible civilian justification” for the highly enriched uranium it is stockpiling.
In a statement ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting, the countries warned that Iran’s stockpile has “reached unprecedented levels, again without any credible civilian justification. It gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
The trio noted that Tehran has recently “ramped up its installation of advanced centrifuges, which is yet another damaging step in Iran’s efforts to undermine the nuclear deal that they claim to support.”
London, Paris and Berlin on Dec. 6 informed the United Nations of their readiness to reimpose “snap back” sanctions on Iran over its illicit nuclear activity.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has already become the only non-nuclear state to have uranium enriched to 60%, just a short step from military-grade level.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement in 2018, arguing it did not sufficiently curb Tehran’s path to the bomb.
Britain, France and Germany agreed late last month to continue nuclear talks with the Islamic Republic following a meeting in Geneva and amid threats by Trump to reinstate a “maximum pressure” campaign on the Islamic Republic once he returns to the White House in January.
Trump’s team is weighing two main options to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including preventative airstrikes, The Wall Street Journal reported on Dec. 13, citing people familiar with the plans.
Since he won the election in November, Trump held three phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after which the Israeli leader said that he and the incoming U.S. president “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it.”
