Program Coordinator Emma Sandifer was quoted by FactCheck.org on President Trump’s claims about Iran’s nuclear program.
“In the absence of IAEA monitoring, accurate information is scant,” Emma Sandifer, program coordinator at the nonpartisan Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told us in an email, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA hasn’t been able to assess the three bombed nuclear program sites, though it has inspected all other declared nuclear facilities in the country, the IAEA chief told Reuters in January.
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As we’ve reported before, the “breakout time” — a term that refers to the time Iran would need, if it chose to do so, to produce weapons-grade uranium that could then be used for one bomb — had been about a week or so for at least the past few years. However, “‘breakout time’ is often misleading,” Sandifer said. “While the time it may have taken Iran to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon may have once been a matter of weeks, that is only one piece of the puzzle. After this point, once you have the weapons-grade uranium, Iran would then need to manufacture the rest of the weapon. This process would likely take much longer, perhaps months to a year.”
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As for Trump’s statement that Iran “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program” after last year’s airstrikes, Kimball and Sandifer said there wasn’t evidence of that. “There is no evidence from the IAEA, from independent analysis of commercial satellite imagery, nor any evidence presented to Congress from the U.S. intelligence Community that Iran was rebuilding the damaged nuclear facilities and preparing to restart enrichment operations,” Kimball said.
Sandifer said that satellite images in January “showed repair activity at two of the Iranian nuclear sites bombed in June of 2025, the Natanz and Isfahan facilities. However, there is a lack of evidence that Iran had taken steps toward rebuilding its nuclear program beyond these repairs. Some experts believe that this activity was not a sign of reconstruction but an assessment of the damage to key assets.”
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“Iran’s missile arsenal remains one of the pillars of its security strategy,” Sandifer, of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told us. “However, there is little evidence that Iran could build missiles that reach the United States in the near future. Recent estimates determined that not only does Iran have no intercontinental ballistic missile capability, but the country appears to have maintained its self-imposed missile range limit of 2,000 km.” Read more
