(NewsNation) — Amid conflicting claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, an expert in the field tells NewsNation there are several factors at play that would determine the country’s motive and intent.
Francesca Giovannini, executive director of the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs, says whether Iran has the capability of producing a nuclear weapon is not as important as the potential infrastructure surrounding it.
‘We don’t know very much’
Any nuclear weapons program consists of multiple phases. Iran has accumulated about 200 pounds of enriched uranium, a figure that, according to Giovannini, goes beyond “any potential peaceful use.”
Where global intelligence differs is in Iran’s position in other phases of a nuclear program.
“For example, you need detonations, you need nuclear weapon designs. You need missiles that are able to lift up the core, and so we don’t exactly know the development of that part of the weaponization program,” said Giovannini.
She said this is where Israeli and American intelligence differ.
“The Israelis argue that the Iranians already have access to all these phases,” said Giovannini. “The Americans argue that, ‘No, actually, they don’t have, for example, nuclear weapons designs yet.’ And that is where the difference is: We know that there is a weaponization intent, but what we don’t know is the development of the infrastructure to lead to a nuclear weapon.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday he will decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in the conflict given the “substantial chance” for renewed negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
He said it would be a matter of “weeks or months” until Iran had a nuclear weapon, disputing a belief by parts of the intelligence community that Iran is much farther away from building a nuclear bomb.
A week into their war, Israel and Iran exchanged more strikes Friday as new diplomatic efforts led by the Europeans took place in Geneva. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held several hours of talks with the European Union’s top diplomat and counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Israel’s military says 25 fighter jets carried out airstrikes Friday morning targeting “missile storage and launch infrastructure components” in western Iran. In the Israeli city of Haifa, at least 19 people were wounded by an Iranian missile barrage.
A week of Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 657 people and wounded 2,037 others, the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said Friday.