Iran nuclear bomb

“Iran has the pieces, and they could eventually put them together one day,” Grossi told the French newspaper Le Monde.

Either Tehran will reach a deal with the US and the E-3 in the next two to three months, or it will face global sanctions and possibly an Israeli air force strike.

Even destroying the nuclear program will not change Iran’s fundamental goals expressed in its constitution, nor the threat it presents to humanity.

The stock of uranium refined to up to 60% in the form of uranium hexafluoride grew by 92.5 kg in the past quarter to 274.8 kg, one of two confidential IAEA reports said.

The Islamic regime has domestically developed an air defense system and has Russian S-300s to protect its nuclear sites, the report says, though they are concerned it is not enough.

Diplomats say that the escalation is not as big as feared, and involves installation of clusters of centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, at both its underground enrichment sites.

In recent months, multiple top Iranian officials have threatened the West that it might publicly decide that nuclear weapons are not prohibited by Islam.

Retaliation causing millions of Iranian deaths may not deter the ayatollahs.

The country's actions, emboldened by lack of international regulation and its alliance with Russia, have left it closer to nuclear weapons capability than ever before, the Washington Post reported. 

On Monday, the IAEA reported that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium by 6.8 kilograms (kg), after having grown this stockpile almost continuously since early 2021.