The world is inching closer to restoring a deal to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The US is examining the Iranian response to a 'final' accord tabled by the EU in the latest round of negotiation for the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or JCPOA, as the deal between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the European Union is known).
In mid-July, Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Al Jazeera, "In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium. ... Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one." Uranium enriched at 90% is considered weapons-grade.
Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently told CNN that Iran does not want to build a nuclear bomb, but instead they want the capability to build one. There's a world of difference.
According to US intelligence agencies, US allies, and IAEA inspectors, by 2003 Iran had abandoned its military nuclear program.
In October 2003, Khamenei issued an oral fatwa, or religious edict, that forbade the production and using any form of weapon of mass destruction. Two years later, in August 2005, the fatwa was cited in an official statement by the Iranian government at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.
"We do not need nuclear bombs. We have no intention of using a nuclear bomb," Khamenei said in a November 2006 speech, according to a transcript from his office. "We do not claim to dominate the world, like the Americans, we do not want to dominate the world by force and need a nuclear bomb. Our nuclear bomb and explosive power is our faith."
How many countries have nuclear bombs?
Nuclear weapons analysts estimate that the world's nine nuclear states--China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States--have around 13,000 nuclear warheads in total, according to the Arms Control Association.
Iran's nuclear power station and compared to others
The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is the only nuclear power reactor in Iran, with a total of 42 199 million kilowatts of electricity generated from March 2011 to March 2020, which provided 1.84% of national electricity production in 2019.
According to Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atom Energy Organization of Iran, the country has less than two percent of the global nuclear capacity but is subject to 25 percent of all inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Eslami feels that western powers use the threat of Iran's nuclear program as a pretext to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear technology, which has nothing to do with atomic bombs but enables scientific achievements.
Currently, Iran does not possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and is a signatory to treaties repudiating the possession of WMDs including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN
Israel views Iran as their enemy. Iran is part of a global resistance movement against the occupation of Palestine. The resistance movement, in its many forms, demands that the five million Palestinians, who are Christians and Muslims, be given their human rights and a homeland that guarantees their freedom and dignity.
In September 2012, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly and used a hand-drawn caricature of a bomb to illustrate the threat of Iran developing a nuclear bomb. His theatrical stunt was effective, and it got the attention of at least Donald Trump.
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