Editor's note: Israeli officials have been warning for more than three decades that Iran is moving closer to nuclear weapons, including predictions from the early 1990s that Tehran may be just a few years away.
This history warrants examination whenever another dramatic intelligence assessment appears. Iran's stockpile of 60% enriched uranium is real and the IAEA has described it as a serious proliferation concern, but enriched uranium is not the same as nuclear weapons. American public intelligence said in 2025 that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, while the IAEA said in 2026 it had no information showing a structured and systematic Iranian plan to build one.
We report the Israeli assessment because it is newsworthy, not because the claim itself should be treated as proof.