How worried should we be about Iran’s nuclear threat? ...Middle East

The US is engaging in direct talks with Iran over its nuclear capabilities, with President Donald Trump touting a “big meeting” this weekend.

Trump said that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon”, and that would be “trouble” if the talks don’t bear fruit.

But what might be on the table during the talks – and how concerned should we be about Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

Iran has said its nuclear programme “only serves peaceful purposes” and that “nuclear weapons have no place in our doctrine”.

Whether or not this is true, Iran almost certainly does not yet have nuclear weapons, according to the intelligence company Janes, so its immediate nuclear threat to other countries today is “minimal.”

However, it does have some of the capabilities needed to create a bomb, including the ballistic missiles that could theoretically be used to carry nuclear warheads, and uranium supplies.

“Tehran has amassed a large stockpile of enriched uranium since 2019,” the firm’s Middle East North Africa team said.

“As of April 2025, Iran has a stockpile of enriched uranium which means that the country has enough material for around six to eight nuclear weapons, depending on warhead design and configuration, and further enrichening its stockpile to 80 to 90 per cent [the level needed for weapons].”

The amount of uranium Iran has at the 60 per cent level, which can be increased to weapons-grade relatively quickly, has increased “fairly substantially” – a “key indicator of the potential Iranian nuclear threat”.

US President Donald Trump announced the talks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 7 April (Photo: Saul Loeb/ AFP)

“If a decision were made by Iranian authorities to go for the nuclear weapons capability, the larger the amount of 60 per cent uranium in its stockpile, the more weapons material it could amass within a shorter span of time compared to keeping its stockpile at lower levels of enrichment.”

The Janes team said documents from the Tehran nuclear archive, released by Israel in 2018, revealed that Iran almost certainly ran a nuclear weaponisation programme between 1999 to 2004 and made “fairly significant advances” in many areas needed to develop a nuclear bomb.

There are also indications that the Iranians were seeking to conduct a “cold test” – a test where the uranium is replaced by a surrogate material, so it is not a live bomb – but the programme was shut down before this happened.

In 2015, Iran signed an agreement which placed limitations on its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from sanctions, but it effectively collapsed when Trump withdrew America from it three years later.

Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, said Iran’s nuclear programme had accelerated since the collapse of the 2015 agreement, and its breakout period [the time needed to produce a nuclear bomb] had “shortened significantly in recent years”.

However, he said it was important to note that it was “the US and Israel that killed that deal, not Iran”.

But even if it has ramped up since 2015, Iran’s nuclear programme has experienced many setbacks, including airstrikes on facilities and the assassination of several of the programme’s nuclear scientists.

“In terms of Europe, the primary worry would be the regional implications of Iran as a nuclear threat and whether this leads to any military strikes that cause an oil price shock or a broader Iran-Israel conflict,” Janes said.

“While Iran’s missiles could in theory cover parts of Europe, it is very unlikely Iran would consider such a thing, especially if it only has a small number of warheads.”

Iran has been weakened by recent setbacks

Iran and its allies have been weakened by recent conflict with Israel and are likely to want to avoid embroiling themselves in further clashes, so may be more amenable to a deal with the US.

Trump has given little detail about the goals or remit of his talks with Iran.

According to Janes researchers, he is likely to seek a tougher deal with Tehran which not only hinders its nuclear development but also reduces its wider influence in the region, such as its relationship with proxy groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

Trump may also want to reduce its ballistic missiles arsenal and its support for Russia in Ukraine, Janes said, but this would “almost certainly be rejected by Tehran as the basis for a nuclear deal”.

However, a deal which effectively reheated the 2015 agreement was “unlikely”, because it was made under a different US president and before recent Iranian technology developments, which make an agreement more complex, they said.

Dr Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, said Tehran’s current leadership was split on the question of nuclear weapons – and its approach to Trump.

President Masoud Pezeshkian was elected last July after campaigning on promises to improve relations with the West, but the more hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently extended military drills at Iran’s nuclear sites amid reports the incoming Trump administration could back Israeli strikes against the facilities.

“There is a divide in Iran on the question of how to approach the US and its allies on the question of its nuclear programme,” she said.

“President Pezeshkian has been more open to engagement with the West, whereas the IRGC and more conservative actors lobby for a hardline approach as the country braces for the ‘hyper’ maximum pressure offensive that President Trump has threatened,” she previously told The i Paper.

A deal with the US would only be tolerable for Tehran if it gave “major” economic sanctions relief and allowed the development of a civilian nuclear programme, Janes researchers said.

Razak agreed that it “can’t be one sided for Iran” and must include some sanctions relief, but said that officials “know they’re coming from a weak position, having dealt with many blows in the region, so they might be in a position to be flexible”.

“For a deal, Iran needs to try and bring lifting of sanctions to the table, and to ensure some kind of refrain on the side of the US from attacking key allies, though I’m not sure how realistic this is,” she said.

Should the two sides fail to reach an agreement, the US could take economic or military action against Iran.

While heavy financial penalties are already in place, the US could launch new economic sanctions targeting Iran’s shipments of oil to China, which have been increasing since 2020 and given a “lifeline” to the regime, Janes said.

But the most impactful leverage would be the threat of military action.

Trump has already hinted that he would launch airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, likely in partnership with Israel, should the talks fail to produce result.

He said talks with Iran were taking place to avoid “doing the obvious” – widely read as a reference to airstrikes – adding: “I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran … Iran is going to be in great danger.”

US Central Command forces carry out airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi targets across Yemen (Photo : Centcom/ Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Trump has ramped up strikes on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen recently, ostensibly to prevent their shipping attacks, but perhaps also to flex the US’s military might ahead of negotiations with Iran.

However, Pinfold said it was unlikely that Trump ever send American troops to Iran because he was elected on a pledge to end the US’s “forever wars”.

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“Instead, the US will claim that they can hold back Israel but will give the green light for a strike if Iran does not show flexibility in talks,” he said.

“If push comes to shove, we’ll likely see US airstrikes on Iran, but the main effort will be focused on missile defences for Israel to nullify any Iranian counterstrike.”

But the threat of military action could backfire and stall talks, Razak warned, making it hard for Iran to negotiate while the US is attacking its allies.

Should it decide to take military action, the US may also be forced to act without most of its international partners.

“Europe won’t be keen to pursue this so whether the US will strike out on its own, with Israel, is still hard to say, but is not unlikely if a deal is not reached,” Razak said.

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