- 11 June 2012
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- US-Iran War
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described how close he believes Iran is to building nuclear weapons in an in-depth interview that aired over the weekend on CBS’s “60 minutes.”
“The consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon,” Panetta explained. This means that, were Iran to decide to construct a nuclear weapon, it would take up to three years to actually build one given current capabilities. The clock would not begin until Iran made such a decision.
Panetta and other officials have been clear that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon and has called for continued diplomacy, as well as economic pressure, in order to ensure that Iran never chooses to weaponize. Panetta’s time frame for Iran’s ability to weaponize further illuminates the disconnect between what war hawks in Congress are saying and how experts are describing Iran’s nuclear threat.