The ICG report quoted a senior Iranian official as saying, "Serious people know that, even if Iran sought nuclear weapons, it will take years to manufacture one. What's more, no state has ever invited opprobrium or a military strike just to produce a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium."
In an interview, Jim Walsh of MIT's Security Studies Program was scathing about the "breakout" scenario the administration is using to justify its diplomatic stance. "The idea of Iran kicking out inspectors to rush to get one bomb is silly," he told IPS.
Samore believed that Iran would be far more likely to try what he calls a "sneakout" -- the use of secret facilities to enrich uranium to weapons grade -- than a "breakout."
But as is generally acknowledged by proliferation specialists, such a covert route to a nuclear weapons capability would take much longer than trying to do so openly. Furthermore, it is almost certain to be detected, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in April 2013.
Despite his conviction that the breakout concept makes no sense as the basis for negotiations with Iran, Samore believes it will be "the test for any deal," because it is the only way to measure it. "It's a political fact of life," Samore said. "It all gets boiled down to breakout time."
The dominance that the breakout advocates have achieved in the lopsided political discourse about Iran has given opponents of an agreement a new form of pressure on the Obama administration to make unrealistic demands in the negotiations.
Einhorn admitted at a panel at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. on Tuesday that the decision on the length of breakout time and the level of centrifuges to be demanded "will come down to a political judgment."
He clearly suggested, however, that the decision is primarily a response to political pressures from various unnamed parties and not a matter of finding a political compromise with Iran.
"Some say six months or less," he said. "Others say you need a year. Some say a year and a half or two years."
The former senior State Department official on proliferation issues insisted, moreover, that there was no possibility of accepting Iran's explicit demand to be permitted to increase its enrichment capacity to as many as 30,000 centrifuges in order to support a nuclear power program.
"That amount would bring breakout time down to weeks or days," he said. "That's breakout."
He did not discuss the possibility of agreement on gradually phasing in additional centrifuges as the practical need for them is demonstrated by progress on a new nuclear reactor.
The tough talk by Einhorn, who has clearly been given the green light to describe administration thinking publicly, makes it much less likely that the administration will back away from a breakout demand in the face of firm Iranian resistance.
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