The White House warned Tuesday that Iran is only weeks from a nuclear “breakout” and the Trump administration is to blame.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the time in which Iran could build a nuclear weapon is “down to a matter of weeks.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed the secretary of state’s remarks, saying, “Their breakout period is down from about a year, which is what we knew it was during the deal, to just a few weeks or less.”
Psaki added that this fact “definitely worries us,” the Times of Israel reported.
The breakout period is the amount of time it will take Iran to accumulate enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
“If we go back, under the Iran nuclear deal, Iran’s nuclear program was tightly constrained,” she said. “Since the Trump administration ceased US participation in the deal, Iran has rapidly accelerated its nuclear program.”
“That is a direct impact of pulling out of the nuclear deal, making us less safe, giving us less visibility, and it’s one of the reasons we pursued a diplomatic path again,” Psaki said, referring to Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal in 2018.
Earlier this week, senior Israeli officials were cited as saying that the Biden administration is closer than ever to admitting the talks in Vienna to return to the nuclear deal with Iran have failed permanently.