BICOM

What happened: Information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week revealed that Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon has once more accelerated.

• The nuclear watchdog confirmed that inspections had found uranium particles enriched up to 83.7% in Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site.
• It was also revealed that Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile stood, as of February 12, at 3,760.8 kilograms, some 18 times in excess of the limit imposed by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement between Iran and world powers.
• Inspectors also discovered, on January 21^st, that two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges at the facility had been configured in a “substantially different” form from that previously declared by Iran.
• Visiting Berlin, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen called on the international community to pursue a dual approach of snap-back sanctions and “to have a credible military option on the table as well.” “This is the time…. This is the time to take steps. This is the time to do actions to prevent Iran to achieve a nuclear weapon,” he told Western allies.
• In a Wednesday press briefing, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that while Washington continues to favour a diplomatic solution, it was also “very clear” that it would, “through all means necessary, ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.”
• US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Colin Kahl told a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that Iranian progress towards a bomb has been “remarkable”.

Context: the increase to 83.7% uranium enrichment moves Iran closer to the weapons-grade threshold of 90%.

• Though inspectors have yet to confirm if this detection is the result of design or accident, as Iran claims, Iran admits to a programme of enrichment to 60% at two nuclear sites.
• For nearly two years, Tehran has hampered inspections efforts, including by the removal of monitoring cameras at nuclear sites.
• Kahl’s testimony concluded that Iran’s “breakout” time to sufficient uranium enrichment to weapons grade now stood at 12 days.
• “Back in 2018, when the previous administration decided to leave the JCPOA, it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce… one bomb’s worth of fissile material. Now it would take about 12 days,” he said.
• The E3 European states – the UK, France, and Germany – share Israeli and US concern at Iranian nuclear acceleration. E3 Foreign Ministers met with US counterpart Anthony Blinken at a side-line meeting at the recent Munich Security Conference, while a joint E3-US statement from early February noted that increased uranium enrichment “carries significant proliferation-related risks and is without any credible civilian justification.”
• Despite the reduction in breakout time, both Israeli and US intelligence estimate that once the 90% threshold is reached, it will still take Iran between one and two years to build a nuclear warhead capable of forming a ballistic missile.
• CIA director Bill Burns said in an interview last weekend that the US remained unsure if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had made the formal decision to resume a nuclear weapons programme.
• On Wednesday, former IDF intelligence head Tamir Hayman disagreed with Burns’ assessment.
• Speaking at an INSS conference, Hayman said that Burns had erroneously applied a “Western” decision-making paradigm to Iran: “We can’t just go based on once we see an order from Iran’s supreme leader that only then will we see a nuclear” weapon.
• Away from the nuclear issue, Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, head of the military’s Operations Directorate, revealed this week that Iran had twice attempted to attack Israeli-linked vessels in the Arabian Sea during the past month.
• The British navy also announced yesterday that in late February it had seized anti-tank missiles and fins for ballistic missile assemblies likely headed to Houthi rebels in Yemen from Iran, during a raid on a small boat in the Gulf of Oman.
• UK Minister of State for Security Tom Tugendhat last week confirmed the assessment of Iranian journalist Catherine Perez-Shakdam that Iran is preparing to target Diaspora Jews in the event of an Israeli strike on the Islamic Republic.
• “They wanted to have a better understanding so they would know how to strike and where, so that if Israel ever dared to attack Iran, the Diaspora would have a very nasty surprise,” said Perez-Shakdam.
• “We know that the Iranians are using non-traditional sources to carry out these operations, including organized criminal gangs. They are paying criminal gangs to conduct surveillance,” said Tugendhat.
• In a recent BICOM briefing, Iran expert Behnam Ben Taleblu noted that despite Western condemnation of its support for Russia in its war with Ukraine, Iran is growing more assertive and confident internationally and is embracing the risk inherent in both its nuclear aggression and weapons proliferation.
• On proliferation, Ben Taleblu cautioned that missions to degrade the supply, such as that widely attributed to the Mossad in Isfahan recently, could not prevent the accumulation of Iranian intelligence and expertise stored online.
• Last week saw the Israeli Defence Ministry’s 2023 annual work plan conference, with participants including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Ministry Director General Maj. Gen. (Res.) Eyal Zamir and the head of the Ministry’s Political-Security Division, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Dror Shalom discussing Israel’s military options in preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Looking ahead: Israeli and US officials have confirmed that Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi will visit Washington early next week for discussions with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

• IAEA head Rafael Grossi is set to meet with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran tomorrow, in an effort to “reset the relationship at the highest level”.