Fears Grow Over Iran's Nuclear Program as Tehran Digs a New Tunnel Network

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : All that said, former American officials said, Iran has the capability of building a nuclear weapon very quickly.
52% : The evidence, some of it stolen by Israel from a warehouse in Tehran, suggests otherwise: that Iran has had plans in place for two decades to construct a bomb, if it concluded that it was in its interest.
52% : "During these very days, Iran is making an effort to complete the production and installation of 1,000 advanced IR6 centrifuges at its nuclear facilities, including a new facility being built at an underground site near Natanz," he said.
50% : WASHINGTON -- Israeli and American intelligence officials have been watching each day as Iran digs a vast tunnel network just south of the Natanz nuclear production site, in what they believe is Tehran's biggest effort yet to construct new nuclear facilities so deep in the mountains that they can withstand bunker-busting bombs and cyberattacks.
50% : In the eyes of experts, Tehran is getting to the point of becoming what Robert Litwak, who has written extensively on the Iranian program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, called a "nuclear threshold state whose uranium enrichment program creates an inherent option -- a hedge -- to produce nuclear weapons," without actually taking the last step.
49% : To protect its future programs, Iran began building facilities deep underground.
46% : By most accounts, Iran is closer to being able to produce a bomb today than at any other point in the two-decade-long saga of its nuclear program -- even if it is planning, as many national security officials believe, to stop just short of producing an actual weapon.
46% : Several Israeli officials say they believe Iran's ultimate objective is to use the facility to enrich uranium at a mass scale, using a family of advanced centrifuges that Iran has already started installing, on a test basis, at its older facility nearby.
45% : Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who retired recently as the head of U.S. Central Command, where he oversaw military planning for dealing with Iran, said Tehran, at least in the short term, was trying to leverage its nuclear capabilities as it negotiates with the United States.
45% : The 60 percent level of uranium enrichment is just short of what is needed to produce a weapon, and as Iran has amassed quantities of it over the past several months, the estimates of how long it would take to get fuel usable for a bomb has dwindled to weeks.
45% : He said the real "crown jewels" for Iran are ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.
43% : It was exposed in September of 2009, early in the Obama administration, when Iran, realizing that the cover had been blown on its project, hurriedly told the I.A.E.A of its existence before Mr. Obama and France's president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, could announce the finding.
40% : Still, the United States is not convinced Iran intends to use the facility to enrich uranium.
37% :"Iran's move at Natanz," he said of the plant now under construction, "amps up pressure on the United States to reach a new deal by highlighting the risk of a nuclear breakout should diplomacy fail."
37% : Because it is still in a nascent phase, it plays no role in any effort to estimate how long it would take Iran to complete a weapon.
37% : On the Ground, Worrying Levels of EnrichmentTo Biden administration officials, the more immediate problem is that Iran has successfully pushed ahead with its enrichment of uranium to achieve a level of 60 percent purity -- far higher than anything they might need for civilian nuclear power plants.
34% : Still, American officials also continue to believe that Iran has not taken steps to build an actual weapon -- though Israeli officials express doubts.
32% : On Mr. Biden's trip, the question of taking more extreme measures to stop Iran, as the United States and Israel have attempted before, will be high on the agenda.
30% : Mr. Biden's refusal of Iran's demand to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of terrorist organizations, along with a flow of new revenue to Tehran resulting from today's soaring oil prices, have contributed to the stalemate in the talks.
26% : But the facility could eventually prove critical to Iran if the Biden administration's efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear continues to run into roadblocks.

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