Iran can assemble nuclear material for a bomb in ‘12 days’

IRAN can amass enough material for a nuclear bomb in “about 12 days”, the US defence department has said, in a sign of the “remarkable” progress Tehran has made with its atomic programme since Washington abandoned a deal to contain it.

“In 2018 it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one bomb’s worth of fissile material,” Colin Kahl, the US under-secretary of defence for policy, told the House of Representatives’ armed services committee.

“Now it would take about 12 days. Iran’s nuclear progress since we left [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] has been remarkable.”

He was responding to a Republican politician who asked why US President Joe Biden had sought to revive the deal.

The United Nations Atomic Energy Agency has been requesting answers from Tehran over uranium particles enriched to near weapons grade at its Fordow plant.