Iran is now in a better position to build a nuclear device and launch a weapons program through ongoing research and other activities, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Citing a report from the director of national intelligence to Congress last month, the Journal reported that Iran has "undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so."
The United States intelligence community has said it doesn't believe that Iran has built a nuclear device or is considering a resumption of its nuclear weapons program, only that it could if it wanted to, according to the report.
"Iran doesn't have an active military nuclear program," a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the Journal.
However, Iran has produced enough weapons-grade enriched uranium to make multiple nuclear weapons, experts have said previously.
"Now that Iran has mastered the production of weapons-grade uranium, the next logical step is to resume weaponization activities to shorten the time needed to manufacture a nuclear device once a political decision is made," Gary Samore, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, told the Journal. "Given the need for secrecy, it appears that Iran is proceeding very cautiously, which creates uncertainty and ambiguity about its intentions."
U.S. intelligence has said Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the U.S. would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Iran has said its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, the Journal reported.
The U.S. in June issued fresh sanctions targeting Iran in response to its "continued nuclear escalations."
"I am prepared to accept the IC judgment that the supreme leader [of Iran] hasn't already made a decision to weaponize the program," Ariel Levite, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment, told the Journal.
"But by the same token I am inclined to believe that [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has at least not forbidden his scientists from engaging in activity that would allow them to take Iran to the uppermost level of a nuclear threshold," he said.