Sanger on Iran: The Temptation for Iran to Race Ahead with a Nuclear Program Could Be Pretty High

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BLITZER: “Significant role. Did David Sanger our friend from The New York Times, is with a to CNN, national security analysts one thing that worries me and I hope I‘m worried about it, but let me get your thoughts. Iran is pretty close. I‘m told to develop a nuclear capability. How close are they right now because if Israel retaliates, None of us knows what around might do.”

SANGER: “What we know about this wolf is that the Iranians shipped most of their nuclear fuel out after the 2015 agreement with the Obama Administration after President Trump decided to pull out of that agreement, they have slowly be to build back-up and they probably have enough now for about three nuclear weapons but it would take them probably six months, maybe a year to actually fashion it into a weapon. I think the bigger fear here now is that if we are really at the cusp of a new age one in which there are direct strikes back-and-forth between Israel and Iran. The temptation for Iran to race ahead with nuclear program could be pretty high in till now, they‘ve been moving steadily, slowly, but they haven‘t been racing toward it as far as we can can tell. And that‘s been an interesting bit of restraint. This is second thing we‘re looking for and it gets really to what cedric just said if it turns out that these waves are one and done and that a few hours from now, we‘re not seeing more coming. Then. I think it‘s a signal from Iran that they had to go out and do something, but they don‘t plan to get into a situation where the Israelis are under pressure to go take the next step if on the other hand, this is followed by cruise missiles and others that it truly is an effort to overwhelm the system then that‘s a very different, that‘s followed by proxies like Hezbollah are the Houthis taking aim at Israel complicates it a lot and particularly complicated because President Biden, his aides have been on the phone. Two prime minister Netanyahu and others saying, let‘s, let tonight be it if there are no significant casualties.”