Khate Sevom

Does Iran already possess a nuclear arsenal? Increasingly that conclusion seems ever more likely.

To begin with, the posture of the Western World towards Iran has been tepid as of late. We have tip-toed around the Middle East, taking great care not to overly provoke the Iranians. Traditionally, we have only done this in situations where warfare would have cataclysmic consequences for the world, such as has been the case with North Korea.

Secondly, Iran has long since had what is called a "break-out potential" of between several weeks to several months. That means if Iran wanted to create a nuclear weapon, it would take them only a few days to accomplish that task. This has been their break-out time since nearly a decade ago. So it stands to reason that they either successfully created nuclear weapons, or are so close to doing so that their adversaries treat then as if they already are a nuclear power.

Finally, the truth of the matter is that nuclear weapons are and have required relatively rudimentary skills in order to successfully construct. With weapons-grade Uranium, you need only fire a single pellet of it into a larger mass of it in order to trigger a fission reaction, while with Plutonium, you need only surround it with an explosive shell, which you then detonate to trigger the explosion.

So, all of that having been said, it is very likely that, like Israel, Iran has a nuclear arsenal as of now (February 2024), and that, also like Israel, they are not openly admitting so.