The White House on April 26 expressed concern that Iran is allegedly accelerating its nuclear program, saying Tehran could obtain sufficient fissile material for one nuclear bomb within weeks. The remarks echoed those previously coming from the Department of State, underscoring a potential new theater in an already deteriorating global security landscape – even if this assessment may not to be accurate.
According to reports in the Israeli media, the US and Israel are discussing alternative methods to deal with the potential for a nuclear Iran. This is because, per these reports, the US has essentially abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also called the “Iran nuclear deal”) framework, i.e. a diplomatic route to address the issue. It raises the question of whether a military response would be on the table in the absence of any viable diplomatic solution.
On the other hand, over 40 former top European officials, including former foreign and defense ministers from over half a dozen countries, published an open letter urging the US and Iran to conclude their negotiations on returning to the 2015 JCPOA.
The letter noted the most contentious issue in the negotiations, the designation of Iran’s Islamic Republican Guard Corps as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” has obvious compromises – even if those would be politically complicated on the American domestic scene. It also bashed the last two years of US Iran policy as a bad legacy of former President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, which not only failed but made the world an objectively less safe place.