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Iran Is Shockingly Close to Nuclear Breakout Potential; The World Must Act
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: West Asia News Agency via REUTERS
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will soon issue new reporting on Iran’s nuclear program from a summer of inspections at Tehran’s nuclear sites.
The new data — and their implications — may cause a shock.
In June, Tehran installed numerous new uranium-enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment plant and its underground Fordow site, more than tripling the latter’s capacity to produce uranium enriched to 60 percent purity.
Amassing 60 percent enriched material puts Iran days from enriching that uranium to 90 percent, the level needed for atomic weapons. As a result, the Islamic Republic’s so-called “breakout time” — specifically, the amount of time the regime needs to produce weapons-grade uranium for multiple nuclear devices — may have dropped significantly.
The IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors will meet next during the week of September 9 in Vienna, where Washington and its European allies will consider Tehran’s nuclear advances, and assess Iran’s non-compliance with previous Board demands that the regime cooperate on a multi-year IAEA investigation into Tehran’s nuclear weapons-work.
To deter and penalize further Iranian advances, the West should pass an IAEA censure resolution against Tehran, and trigger the snapback of UN sanctions on the regime.
Iran’s breakout time began dropping precipitously after the election of US President Joe Biden in 2020, as Tehran exploited his desire to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and remove sanctions. Notably, this expansion came after Iran’s relative restraint when President Donald Trump exited the nuclear accord in 2018 and implemented massive US sanctions that severely crippled the Iranian economy.
As of November 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security, Iran needed 3.5 months to make weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear device, and around 5.5 months to produce enough material for two.
Biden later said he wouldn’t try to revive the joint nuclear deal, but stood by as Iranian breakout time dropped to terrifying levels.
IAEA data for May 2024 indicated the Islamic Republic could make enough fuel for one nuclear weapon in under 7 days, and enough for 13 weapons in four months. The regime would require an unknown number of additional months to build atomic devices and integrate the weapons-grade fuel, and the United States and Israel have reportedly observed Iranian scientists working on such efforts.
At Fordow last June, Iran installed advanced-generation machines known as the IR-6, which churn out uranium at a fast clip. There, Iran was already enriching uranium to 60 percent purity in two clusters of centrifuges — known as cascades — each containing 174 IR-6 machines, and informed the IAEA it was adding eight more cascades.
Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright crunched the numbers at Fordow, and found — using that facility alone — that Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for nine nuclear weapons in two months, adding to Iran’s overall breakout capability and rendering the plant an agile pathway for the Islamic Republic to quickly produce fuel for nuclear weapons.
Unless Iran has slowed centrifuge installation, Tehran could have nearly 1,400 IR-6 machines spinning at the highly fortified Fordow site, along with hundreds more new advanced machines at Natanz. A caveat: The United States may have offered the regime informal but lucrative sanctions relief to slow but not stop installation, meaning Iran could ramp back up any time.
These developments pair poorly with new US and Israeli intelligence that Iranian scientists at civilian research institutes were recently studying computer modeling and metallurgy related to nuclear weapons. As a result, the US intelligence community was unable to assert in a recent report to Congress that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons activities, prompting alarm from members of Congress who have seen the report’s classified version and received briefings.
Moreover, it is unclear whether the US and Israeli intelligence communities have adequate insight into Iran’s more covert nuclear weapons-work at military sites.
With the disarray of US election season and multiple world crises, Tehran’s temptation to sprint to nuclear weapons will only grow. Washington and its European allies must immediately counter and deter further Iranian advances.
As a follow-on to the IAEA board’s Iran censure last June — and in light of Tehran’s failure to comply with the board’s demands — the West must vote for a new censure at the IAEA’s upcoming meeting. Yet since Iran used the June board resolution as a pretext to expand its uranium-enrichment capacity immediately after, the West must do better at deterring further advances.
In the new IAEA resolution, Washington and its allies must refer Tehran’s proliferation case to the UN Security Council, where the United States, the United Kingdom, or France may — without Russia and China’s veto — reimpose within 30 days all Iranian sanctions that currently remain lifted by the defunct nuclear accord. Importantly, those sanctions prohibit Tehran’s uranium-enrichment activity and international (read: Russian and Chinese) missile and military trade with the regime. The West must also signal more sanctions pain is to come for additional Iranian advances.
Iran is rapidly approaching the capability to produce a medium-sized nuclear arsenal, and no nation but Israel is acting to stop it. Unless the Western powers plan to counter an expansionist, messianic Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons — one that is already acting on plans to destroy Israel by 2040 — they would do well to halt the regime’s advances while there is still time.
Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
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Trump Defends Plan to Accept $400 Million Jet From Qatar
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump on Monday defended his controversial decision to accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar, lauding the overture from Doha as “a great gesture.”
“I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture.”
The US president argued that the Qatari government gifted him the jet because he has “helped them a lot over the years in terms of security and safety.”
Trump announced on Sunday night that the US Department of Defense would receive a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a “gift, free of charge” from Qatar. According to Trump, the jet will serve as a replacement to “the 40-year-old Air Force One.” The jet will be considered property of the US federal government until the end of Trump’s term in office, after which ownership of the aircraft will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation.
Trump’s decision to accept the gift from Qatar sparked immediate backlash, with critics accusing the president of violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign countries without the consent of Congress, and compromising national security.
The president’s plan to accept the lavish gift from Qatar has raised concern among foreign policy experts who worry that Doha could influence American policy in the Middle East. Qatar, a wealthy Gulf nation with substantial investments in US real estate and infrastructure, maintains a complex relationship with the Trump administration. Last month, Trump struck a deal to build a full 18-hole golf course in Qatar.
Moreover, Qatar maintains extensive financial links with Hamas, the terrorist group that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza after slaughtering 1,200 people in Israel and taking 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. Qatar has transferred an estimated $1.8 billion to the Hamas terror organization, according to reports. Doha also contributed $30 million per month to Hamas from 2012 to 2023, according to a Qatari official interviewed by Der Spiegel.
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Students for Justice in Palestine Awarded ‘Best’ Campus Group by University of California, Davis Newspaper
University of California, Davis in Davis, California, on May 28, 2024. Photo: Penny Collins/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Davis’s (UC Davis) official campus newspaper has named the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter the “Best Student-Run Organization or Club” for the second consecutive year, despite the group’s history of calling for violence against Jews and Israelis.
The Aggie defended granting SJP one of its highest annual honors, describing it as having “led some of the most prominent political organizing efforts at UC Davis” and fostering students’ interest in “global justice and university accountability.” The paper did not mention SJP’s links to Islamist terrorist organizations or its efforts across the US to advocate for the destruction of both America and Israel.
It continued, “Their advocacy, however, goes far beyond protest. Throughout the year, SSJP hosted film screenings, teach-ins, and information panels aimed at educating students on the historical and ongoing occupation of Palestine. They also continued to call out the University of California system’s financial ties to companies profiting from violence against Palestinians — pressuring administrators to divest and pushing for transparency in how student tuition is spent.”
SJP thanked The Aggie for the award.
“We are honored to receive this acknowledgement and humbled to be held in the high esteem of our peers,” the group said in a statement. “This acknowledgement is not ours alone — it belongs to everyone who continues to show up, speak out, and do the vital work in their communities. It is their dedication that shapes who we are.”
The Aggie has not responded to The Algemeiner‘srequest for comment on this story.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, UC Davis is a hub of anti-Zionist extremism in which faculty and staff regularly call for the destruction of Israel and acts of violence cheered as “resistance.” Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, for example, the university kept on staff a professor who appeared to call for violence against Jewish journalists and their children.
“One group of ppl [sic] we have easy access to in the US is all these Zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation,” American Studies assistant professor Jemma Decristo wrote on the X social media platform. “They have houses [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” The message was followed by images of a knife, an axe, and three blood-drop emojis.
In 2024, UC Davis’s student government (ASUSD) passed legislation adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and falsely accusing Israel of genocide.
“This bill prohibits the purchase of products from corporations identified as profiting from the genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people by the BDS National Committee,” said the measure, titled Senate Bill (SB) #52. “This bill seeks to address the human rights violations of the nation-state and government of Israel and establish a guideline of ethical spending.”
Puma, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Airbnb, Disney, and Sabra are all named on Students for Justice in Palestine’s “BDS List.”
Powers enumerated in the bill included veto power over all vendor contracts, which SJP specifically applied to “purchase orders for custom t-shirts,” a provision that may affect pro-Israel groups on campus. Such policies will be guided by a “BDS List” of targeted companies curated by SJP. The language of the legislation gives ASUCD the right to add more to it.
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California, Davis is one of many SJP chapters that justified Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks In a chilling statement posted after the world became aware of the terrorist group’s atrocities on that day, which included hundreds of civilian murders and sexual assaults, the group said “the responsibility for the current escalation of violence is entirely on the Israeli occupation.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), SJP chapters — which have said in their communications that Israeli civilians deserve to be murdered for being “settlers” — lead the way in promoting a campus environment hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel voices. Their aim, the civil rights group explained in an open letter published in December 2023, is to “exclude and marginalize Jewish students,” whom they describe as “oppressors,” and encourage “confrontation” with them.
The ADL has urged colleges and universities to protect Jewish students from the group’s behavior, which, in many cases, has allegedly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Communities in France, Germany, UK Form New ‘JE3’ Alliance Amid Surge in Antisemitism
From left to right: President Phil Rosenberg of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Yonathan Arfi of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). Photo: Screenshot
The leading representative bodies of Jewish communities in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have formed a new alliance to amplify Jewish perspectives in international debates, amid a troubling rise in antisemitism across all three countries.
On Monday, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), and the Central Council of Jews in Germany announced the formation of the new “JE3” alliance during a conference of the Anti-Defamation League’s J7 Task Force — the largest international initiative against antisemitism — held in Berlin.
This new alliance, inspired by the E3 diplomatic format that unites France, Germany, and the UK to coordinate on key geopolitical issues such as nuclear negotiations with Iran and peace in the Middle East, aims to provide a united Jewish communal voice on these and other pressing international matters.
The newly formed group also seeks to strengthen existing umbrella organizations, such as the World Jewish Congress, the European Jewish Congress, and the J7 initiative — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the United States.
“It is our hope that the JE3 will become a powerful voice for our communities on issues that we care about together,” Josef Schuster of the Central Council, Phil Rosenberg of the Board of Deputies, and Yonathan Arfi of CRIF said in a joint statement.
“It is particularly significant that we brought together the new grouping in Berlin, 80 years after the end of the Holocaust,” the statement continued. “This is a show of intent by our three flourishing communities that we are committed to boosting Jewish life in our respective countries, cooperating in the fight against antisemitism, and enhancing bilateral and multilateral relations between our countries and Israel.”
Berlin: The largest representative organisations of European Jewish communities in France, Germany, and the UK have today launched a new ‘JE3‘ alliance. @Le_CRIF @ZentralratJuden pic.twitter.com/hXotcz6RDb
— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) May 12, 2025
This new JE3 initiative comes as France, Germany, and the UK, as well as other countries across Europe and around the world, have reported record spikes in antisemitic activity in recent years, largely fueled by a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment following Hamas’s launch of its war against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Last week, the J7 Task Force released its first Annual Report on Antisemitism, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, when Nazi Germany formally surrendered to Allied forces on May 8, marking the end of World War II and the Holocaust.
The report, which echoes findings from recent studies, revealed a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents between 2021 and 2023. These increases include 11 percent in Australia, 23 percent in Argentina, 75 percent in Germany, 82 percent in the UK, 83 percent in Canada, 185 percent in France, and 227 percent in the US. Those numbers continued to spike to record levels in the aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
Additionally, the data showed a concerning rise on a per-capita basis, with Germany reporting over 38 incidents per 1,000 Jews, and the UK seeing 13 per 1,000.
The seven communities identified several common trends, including a surge in violent incidents, recurring attacks on Jewish institutions, a rise in online hate speech, and growing fear among Jews, which has led many to conceal their Jewish identity.
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