Iran’s brisk walk to a nuclear bomb

livemint.com:

Iran keeps making substantial progress in its brisk walk to an atomic weapon, a United Nations report leaked Monday suggests, and what are they going to tell us next—that there’s gambling at Rick’s? Yet the Biden Administration wants to hide this scary truth from the world in this election year. An International Atomic Energy Agency report has concluded that Iran has increased its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium to 142.1 kilograms—an increase of 20.6 kilograms since the IAEA’s last estimate in February. This will be enough for three warheads once Iran completes the technologically straightforward process of enriching its hoard to 90% from 60%.

We say “will" rather than “would" since there isn’t serious dispute that Iran intends to join the nuclear-weapons club. But one does need to include the caveat that this is only the enriched uranium the rest of the world knows about. Tehran for years has thwarted the IAEA’s best efforts to fully inspect the nuclear program the mullahs insist they don’t have—one of the great flaws in Barack Obama’s misbegotten 2015 nuclear deal.

You’d think the U.S. would want the IAEA news to be released to pressure the regime. But the Journal reports that the Biden Administration has asked European allies to avoid censuring Iran for these violations of the 2015 pact when the IAEA board meets in June.

Tehran’s nuclear progress has become so alarming it worries France and the United Kingdom, which were enthusiastic participants in the Obama negotiations. But the Administration wants to disguise the truth in order not to provoke Iran by challenging the mullahs on their nuclear program. The White House doesn’t want another new international crisis before the November election.