Iran’s nuclear breakout time has become a key question as President Trump considers whether to bomb the Islamic regime’s key underground nuclear facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in justifying his unprecedented strikes on the regional rival last week, said Iran was “marching very quickly” toward a nuclear weapon.

That seemed to diverge from U.S. assessments — voiced by Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard in a March congressional hearing — that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.

Trump was clear about where he stood when asked Tuesday about Gabbard’s testimony.

“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

Nuclear watchdogs have had limited ability to monitor Iran’s stockpiles since Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2018. For that reason and others, experts say pinning down a specific nuclear timeline is complicated.

“When people give different estimates of Iran’s breakout timeline, I think it’s because they’re talking about different things,” said Heather Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointing to Gabbard’s testimony and Trump’s pushback.

“Tulsi Gabbard said there is no evidence that Iran is weaponizing. That can be a true statement at the same time as Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability,” she said. “If you want to talk about actual weaponization, that is a very specific activity. It involves developing trigger technologies, figuring out how an implosion device works.”

Given its current level of enrichment, experts estimate it would take Iran a week or two to produce the weapons-grade uranium needed for a nuclear weapon and another few months to build a crude weapon.

Then Iran would need to figure out........

© The Hill