To All Those Bragging About "60%" Enriched Uranium

"Only 3-4% of uranium enrichment is required for peaceful purposes" — wait a second sire....

“The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003” — Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence

“Well, the facts are to the contrary, there’s highly enriched uranium — an amount that’s enough for 10 nuclear warheads. This is more than Iran ever had and it’s 60% enrichment grade. There is no civilian use for uranium at 60% enrichment”, said Naftali Bennett, former Israeli Prime Minister on Piers Morgan.

Not just him, but U.S., Israel and a lot of critics around the world believe that the highly enriched uranium Iran have is not for “peaceful purposes”, and they are definitely chasing the nukes.

Well here’s my take or you can say argument as well, but let me go through all of it gradually, first understand what uranium enrichment is and what Iran’s been doing.

Uranium Enrichment

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and critics of Iran’s nuclear progamme are concerned that Iran has been enriching uranium up to 60% purity.

Uranium enrichment is the process of increasing concentration of uranium-235 isotope in natural uranium, which normally have about 0.7 percent U-235. To build a nuclear weapon, uranium must be enriched to about 90 percent U-235. Once enriched to those levels, uranium is considered “weapons-grade”.

It’s kinda hard to get to 60% purity, but once you achieve that, it reduces the time to upgrade it up to the weapons-grade.

Iran’s Legal and Sovereign Rights Under the NPT

Iran argues its 60% enrichment is legal under the NPT, as it is declared to the IAEA and conducted under safeguards, with no evidence of weaponization.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has never specified a numerical limit, such as 60% enrichment, for uranium enrichment activities by signatory states like Iran. Instead, the NPT allows non-nuclear-weapon states to develop nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment, for peaceful purposes under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

So now we know that ENRICHMENT TO 60% IS NOT PROHIBITED. But wait, there’s something else in the story — it’s called ‘2015 JCPOA’.

The 2015 JCPOA

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action aka JCPOA is an agreement signed on July 14, 2015, between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Russia, China, France, UK plus Germany), with the European Union, to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for removing sanctions. It was aimed to ensure Iran’s nuclear activities to remain peaceful.

Iran agreed to cap uranium at 3.67% (suitable for power reactors and energy purposes), reduced the enriched uranium pile to 300 kgs, and limit centrifuges to 5,060 at Natanz and Fordow — All under the monitoring of IAEA. In return, the nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, unlocking billions in Iranian assets and enabling oil exports.

In 2018, the U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA under Trump, reimposing sanctions. Iran began increasing enrichment (to 20%, then 60%) after 2019, citing the U.S. violation and lack of European sanctions relief.

Iran was sticking to 3.67%, But it was Trump (who’s doing all the fuss now) who violated the treaty. This fact reinforces Iran’s claim that it’s nuclear program, including 60% enrichment, is a response to broken international commitments, not a violation to NPT.

Also, JCPOA’s monitoring showed no evidence of Iran pursuing weapons before 2018, and U.S. intelligence still finds no active weapons program.

This strongly suggests that Iran’s decision was intended to send a political message: ‘We have gone as far as we can go in response to provocations without producing weapons-grade uranium.’

So all the critics, why aren’t you looking at all these facts? Maybe 60% is a strategic signal to pressure for sanctions relief or a new deal, not weaponization. Personally, I believe it’s just the strategic intent and Iran wants to show it’s capabilities to the world, kinda scare them off that “weapons-grade is just a piece of cake for us now, so don’t think that we can’t do anything.”

Stance Of U.S. Intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, maddened pro-Trump and pro Israel narratives when she defended Iran against claims of actively pursuing nuclear weapons. In March 2025, during Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, Gabbard stated:

“The intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”

This statement, aligning with U.S. intelligence but shutting off Israel’s claims of a “near-nuclear Iran”, sparked tensions, when recently Trump dismissed her assessment aboard Air Force One, saying, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one” We can expect Tulsi to be fired from the position of DNI soon.

Netanyahu said in a recent interview that Iran was pursuing a “secret plan” to build a bomb within months, but — and it’s quite agreeable to believe “American Intelligence” instead of Netanyahu.

But Why They Waited For 4 Years?

On 29 April, 2021, STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SIPRI), reported that on 13 April, 2021, Iran informed about it’s plan to enrich uranium in response to U.S. violation of JCPOA and a sabotage attack on its Natanz enrichment facility.

They achieved 60% enrichment as early as April 2021, and hasn’t progressed to 90% in the intervening years.

We know that current Iranian regime hate the whole Zionist scheme and they refuse to recognize Israel — but to provide an argument now that Iran is building WMDs currently to remove Zionist regime from existence and drop it on Israel and allies is so absurd and completely non-sense.

If they wanted to use it on Israel and they are making the bombs now, why they waited for 4 YEARS? Even when there was so much going on after October 7th, and they used their proxies to attack Israel — Israel even did that whole pager attack thing as well as assassinated the head of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, even after all that, the so called “mullah regime with the martyrdom mindset” didn’t decided to use a nuclear weapon against you — why?

In addition, aren’t they are the ones fighting for Palestinians? Why would they drop a nuke in your (illegally occupied) territory? — won’t that affect Palestinians? and their own proxy allies in the region?

If Iran dropped a bomb on Israel, the fallout would screw over the very Palestinians they’ve been backing with proxy fights and loud support. Israel’s tiny—22,000 km²—so even a small nuke in Tel Aviv would blast radioactive junk like asbestos to Gaza and the West Bank, just 40 km away, causing cancer and wrecking their land for years.

I mean the Pro-Israelis are so DUMB.

Are there echoes of 2003 and WMDs in the current debate?

In the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq possessed WMDs, including chemical and biological weapons, and that it was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

These claims were central to justifying military action under the argument that Iraq posed an imminent threat to regional and global security.

After the invasion, extensive searches found no active WMD programmes in Iraq, AND THEY WANT TO DO SAME WITH IRAN.

Subsequent investigations, including those by the US Senate Intelligence Committee and the UK’s Chilcot Inquiry, concluded that the intelligence was deeply flawed and was politicized by leaders to overstate Iraq’s WMD capabilities to build a case for the invasion.

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