Can Iran secretly build a nuclear bomb without being caught by Israel?

Iran’s best nuclear scientist went to his country house with his wife on fall day four years ago. While slowing down for a slowdown, a remote control machine gun mounted on a nearby van fired a volley of bullets, killing it instantly, the Iranian authorities said.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of a sleeping nuclear weapons project known as Project Amad, brutally illustrated how Iranel has penetrated in Iran. This vulnerability has not been exposed further than in recent weeks, Israeli air strikes killing several other scientists who are involved in Iranian nuclear work.

Iranian political leaders are now faced with a dilemma. After the heavy American bombings of their nuclear sites and their aerial defenses, they can conclude a painful compromise with Washington and abandon their uranium enrichment program, or relaunch the secret weapons project organized by Fakhrizadeh.

Unlike other countries that have been able to develop nuclear weapons in secret, Iran cannot assume that it will be able to keep its work hidden. Israel has repeatedly shown that it can escape Iran’s security, discover its illegal nuclear activities and track down senior army personalities, former intelligence officials and experts said.

“Iran’s main challenge in pursuing a secret path will keep it hidden from us and Israeli,” said Eric Brewer, a former intelligence official now on nuclear threat initiative, a non -profit organization focused on world security.

“This is the main challenge, because the two countries, in particular Israel, have demonstrated an ability to penetrate the nuclear program of Iran,” he added. “And Israel has shown an ability to use kinetic strength to remove it.”

The Israeli Air Force has effectively destroyed the air defenses of Iran. For the moment, Iran cannot protect any target on its territory – in particular suspicious nuclear sites – from an American or Israeli bombing, said former intelligence officials.

“The Israelis have a complete domination of intelligence on Iran,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA career officer and now the main member of the Atlantic Council.

“If they see something emanating as a threat, they will remove it … It could mean military strikes. It could be secret action.”

Iran has already tried once to build an atomic bomb under the veil of secrecy. He had a secret nuclear weapons project more than two decades ago, according to Western intelligence agencies.

But its coverage was blown in December 2002, when satellite photos emerged showing an enrichment site in the city of Natanz and a heavy water plant about 200 miles in Arak.

Iran denied having never had a program of weapons. Archive documents stolen in 2018 by the Mossad of Israel spy agency, which, according to the United States, is authentic, has shown detailed plans to build five nuclear weapons.

According to American intelligence agencies, Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons project in 2003. At that time, the secret around the project had been raped and Iran had reasons to be worried following an American invasion in neighboring Iraq.

Since then, Iran has maintained what it said was a civil nuclear program. The enrichment of Iranian uranium and other nuclear works have given Tehran the potential option to continue a possible weapon if it chooses to take this route – which armaments experts call a “threshold” nuclear capacity.

Stolen blueprints

If the regime chooses to run towards a bomb, he will calculate that nuclear weapons discourage any opponent by trying to stage an attack or overthrow his leadership. And it would be to follow a familiar path taken by other countries which has succeeded in pursuing projects of secret bombs, notably North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel.

The Israeli government has kept the Americans in the dark of its nuclear weapons project for years.

In the 1950s, French engineers helped Israel build a nuclear reactor and a secret reprocessing plant to separate plutonium from the worn reactor fuel. The government of Israel to date does not confirm or officially refuses its nuclear arsenal, saying that he will not be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

India’s nuclear program also started in the 1950s, the United States and Canada providing nuclear reactors and nuclear fuels for purely peaceful purposes. India has agreed to backups designed to prevent reactors and fuel from being used for weapons.

But India has secretly retired fuel spent in plutonium in the 1960s, strengthening fissile materials for a nuclear weapon. In 1974, India carried out its first nuclear test, named Buddha smiling.

Pakistan has built its bomb using the nuclear scientist AQ Khan, a metallurgist who stole plans and other information on advanced centrifuge while working in a nuclear engineering company in Amsterdam. Khan was then linked to the distribution of nuclear weapons technologies in Iran and North Korea, among others.

Khan’s assistance in the 1990s proved to be crucial for the North Korea program. The Pyongyang regime has also purchased technology and equipment abroad through companies before or on the black market, according to UN monitors.

It was America that helped Iran launch its nuclear program, before the 1979 Revolution which overthrew the monarchy. During the Shah reign, through the American program “Atoms for Peace”, the United States provided nuclear technology, fuel, training and equipment to Iran in the 1960s, including a research reactor.

Now Iran probably does not need to turn to external partners for technical know-how, according to experts. However, the regime will have an intimidating task reconstructing everything that remains of its nuclear program.

Each nuclear site known in Iran was targeted in the Israel air campaign at the beginning of the month. And then last week, the United States launched an attack on three enrichment sites using 14 “Bunker Buster” bombs of 30,000 pounds and more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles. The CIA says the main facilities have been destroyed and that the nuclear program has been “seriously damaged” in strikes.

Despite the unprecedented damage, which is still being evaluated, Iran may have the technical means to relaunch a program of weapons – including enriched uranium, centrifugal and access to tunnels or other underground sites, according to some arms control experts.

All of the highly enriched uranium stocks has not yet been taken into account, and it has an unknown number of storage centrifuges which were not located on the sites bombed by Israel, reported NBC News.

However, the most important technical obstacle in Iran could produce uranium. Iran had only one known site where it could convert uranium into a solid metallic state, and the Israeli air strikes destroyed it in Isfahan.

Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon without such an installation, and it is not clear if the diet has a factory of secret metal uranium products elsewhere.

Aside from technical obstacles, the decision to build a nuclear bomb will ultimately be shaped by political considerations rather than technology or logistics, according to Jeffrey Lewis, expert in armaments control at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“It’s really a political and non -technical decision,” said Lewis. “He still has a lot of capacity.”

After having undergone an active aerial aggression which demonstrated the air superiority of Israel, Iran can consider nuclear weapons as the only way to defend itself and preserve the survival of the regime, according to Marvin Weinbaum, senior member of the Middle East Institute’s reflection group and professor at the University of Illinois.

“Iran has every reason now, on the basis of what has just happened, to say that we must have a bomb, [and] We will be treated differently if we do, ”said Weinbaum.

Iranian regime officials have long debated the opportunity to develop nuclear weapons, and its policy in the past two decades seemed to make a compromise, giving Tehran the possibility of becoming nuclear if the required circumstances. The question of Iranian officials is whether nuclear weapons will help ensure the survival of the regime or endanger its grip on power, regional analysts said.

Iran’s decision is the threat of Israeli spying and air power, potentially capturing Tehran in the act of rushing to produce a bomb.

“It will be interesting to see if the diet is looped and becomes serious about it, or if their operational security remains as terrible as ever,” said Lewis. “They were so negligent.”

President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to keep conferences on a possible agreement with Iran in the coming days to try to stop its uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions.

Meanwhile, American and Israeli espionage agencies “will be laser focused on the attempt to see what Iran is behind the scenes,” said Polymeropoulos.