Intelligence Community Eyeballs Iranian Nukes as World Chitters Over Strait of Hormuz

As President Trump stresses that his top war goal is to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a likely politically motivated leak of an intelligence community report indicates that efforts on nuclear deterrence are failing.For now, all eyes are on Hormuz. A day after America launched “Project Freedom,” officials insist that the ceasefire in the Gulf is intact even as Abu Dhabi reported Tuesday that Iranian missiles and drones were launched at the United Arab Emirates for the second day in a row. Iranian small boats are also targeting Americans escorting ships that have been stuck at the strait for weeks. Iran “attacked nine ships since the start of the ceasefire, seized two tankers, and attacked American forces more than 10 times,” the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Dan Caine, told reporters Tuesday. He added that those attacks are still “below the threshold required to start a significant operation at this point.”What Iran would have to do to break the ceasefire is known only among a close circle. “Well, you’ll find out, because I’ll let you know,” Mr. Trump told a reporter at the White House Tuesday. The Iranians “know what to do, and they know what not to do,” he added. The mullahs “won’t be successful unless they make a deal.” With little news emerging from the strait, oil prices eased up a bit on Tuesday to $102 a barrel. Mr. Trump told reporters that when he decided to go after Iran, he expected oil prices to soar to $200 or even $250 a barrel. It is worth it, he said, to deny a nuclear weapon to a “crazy” regime.At the United Nations, America is attempting to pass a Security Council resolution on securing free navigation in the Hormuz Strait, though the nuclear file remains a top goal. “This is what they’re doing with the strait,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told White House reporters. “What do you think they would do there with nuclear weapons?” American-Israeli strikes last June, and again as of February 2026, destroyed major nuclear plants, targeted weaponization facilities, and killed dozens of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. Yet an intelligence assessment leaked to Reuters on Monday cites three unidentified sources claiming these strikes made almost no dent in Iran’s timeline to acquire nuclear weapons. Reuters reported that the assessment of Iran’s breakout time for a bomb changed little since last year when it was three to six months. According to the report, Iran can now build a nuclear weapon in nine months to a year, a timeframe questioned by at least one outside analyst.The report seems to represent a “worst-case assessment that is not representative of all U.S. intelligence agencies,” a nonproliferation watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Andrea Stricker, told the Sun. “It factors in Iran accessing the highly enriched uranium from the Isfahan tunnels and possibly elsewhere and likely building a crude nuclear device.”Unlike the leaked report, the Central Intelligence Agency estimates that Iran’s breakout timeline is now up to two years, and Israel claims it’s up to two and a half years, Ms. Stricker said. The leak to Reuters, she added, “was almost certainly politically motivated to discredit the Trump administration’s campaign against Iran.”U.S. leaders note that the act of getting to the destroyed nuclear facilities to extract the 900 pounds of uranium enriched to the 60 percent level that the International Atomic Energy Agency says is unaccounted for would be a challenge in itself. “It would take them weeks to dig it out,” Mr. Trump said, adding that America has eyes on the sites and can detect any attempt to access the enriched uranium. At the same time, the buried enriched uranium is central to the diplomatic negotiations with Iran, and it “will have to be addressed one way or the other,” Mr. Rubio added. Pakistani-led negotiations on ending the war have yet to show progress. Mr. Trump rejected the latest Iranian proposal, which reportedly offered to suspend uranium enrichment for 15 years. As the ceasefire holds for now, Israeli and American security officials are coordinating on a possible new round of strikes, CNN reported Monday. Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, conducted an unscheduled and unpublicized meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday, possibly as part of that coordination, Kan News reported on Tuesday. “We have to have a diplomatic solution that is very clear about the topics that they are willing to negotiate on and the extent and the concessions they’re willing to make at the front end in order to make those talks worthwhile,” Mr. Rubio said. The mullahs seem to believe that as gasoline prices soar and the midterm elections near, Mr. Trump might relent on their demands, but they may overestimate Iran’s endurance. As America works to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is “grasping at straws,” General Caine said Tuesday.

Intelligence Community Eyeballs Iranian Nukes as World Chitters Over Strait of Hormuz

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