An International Atomic Energy Agency report released this week revealed that Iran has amassed enough uranium for three bombs, enriched to nearly weapons grade – a stockpile that has grown precipitously during the months in which Israel and Hamas have been fighting a war in Gaza.

For months, the eyes of the international community and Israel have been elsewhere, enabling the Islamic Republic to continue its race to the bomb. 

“For the supreme leader, Oct. 7 was a weapon of mass distraction so he can expand his weapon of mass destruction,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett posted on X this week that “the goal of Iran’s octopus strategy is to distract Israel with wars against its tentacles (Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and more) so that we don’t deal with stopping Iran.

“We cannot fall into this trap and we must not fall asleep at the wheel,” the post continued. “There is what to do with operational sophistication and diplomatic wisdom. This is an existential danger that must be a top priority for Israel’s leaders.”

Israel’s leadership is “massively distracted by what took place on Oct. 7 with a huge focus on Rafah and much less prioritization on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” Dubowitz said he has learned in meetings in Israel. “It is evidently clear that this would not be a surprise to Tehran.”

In the past, Israel would hold biweekly interagency meetings about the Iranian nuclear threat, but that has not been the case in recent years, and none were held for several months after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

“The U.S. may be asleep at the switch on this, but Israel can ill afford to be,” Dubowitz said. “There needs to be an intensive, obsessive, focused Israeli government effort to address [these] issues.”

Using Oct. 7 as a “weapon of mass distraction” fits with Khamenei’s long-standing strategy, Dubowitz said: “To really pin down Israel with fighting his proxies” – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to name a few – “so he can proceed on his strategic objective to finish the nuclear program, drive the U.S. out of the Middle East and continue to squeeze Israel … making it increasingly difficult for Israelis to live in Israel, drive the best and brightest out, and move in for the kill shot.”

Ben Sabti, a researcher in the Iran Program at the Institute for National Security Studies and a former IDF spokesperson who founded the military’s Persian platform, said that “terror and the nuclear program advance together.”

“The Iranians are positively surprised at how many accomplishments they’ve reached from terrorism, even more than the nuclear file,” Sabti said. “Nuclear takes years, it’s a big effort to buy and build and train scientists. Terrorism has an impact … that works in an ideal way for them.”

Dubowitz posited that the Islamic Republic helped train Hamas terrorists and plan the Oct. 7 attack, so that the next big attack would take place with the backdrop of a nuclear Iran, reducing the IDF’s operational freedom.

“There would be no invasion of Gaza, no massive IDF military campaign, the U.S. president regardless of who it was would tell Israel to stand down, because Iranians would threaten a nuclear escalation,” Dubowitz said. “If you want any hint of what that looks like, look at Ukraine.”

Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, said that as a nuclear-threshold state, Iran “is trying to weaponize and exploit that status, and use it as a sword of Damocles to hang over the international community in an attempt to thwart any pressure on the Islamic Republic, and it’s succeeding.” 

Brodsky said that the Oct. 7 attack could have been motivated by distracting from the nuclear file, but that thwarting normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel was a more likely reason for the timing. In addition, “Hamas and Iranians might have perceived Israeli deterrence to be low or eroded because of judicial reform protests.”

Sabti noted that “the spotlight moved away from Iran even before Oct. 7, with the war in Ukraine. These things played into their hands.”

More than the distractions, Sabti argued, the messages broadcast by the West in recent years encouraged Iran to take risks.

Sabti said Israel was wrong to push for the U.S. to leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration did in 2018: “By leaving it, we cut the rope that was holding the Iranians back. They have a tradition of not breaking deals, even when they’re stuck with a bad deal … We gave them the legitimacy to violate the agreement.” 

In the interim, the Biden administration “stopped [enforcing] sanctions,” and Iran’s leadership “did what they could slowly to increase enrichment and tested us,” Sabti said. “At 20%, the world did nothing, at 60%, even then the world did nothing … The Iranians understand these messages … They feel that they have the upper hand now and can take advantage of this opportunity.” 

As such, “Iran will go right up to the redline, to the abyss, and take risks and play with the world,” he said. “That is an Iranian art form; they have been doing it for 45 years now.”

This week’s IAEA report states that Iran has 313.2 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60%, enough to create three atomic weapons according to the IAEA. The stockpile increased by 45.4 pounds since the last IAEA report in February. Weapons-grade uranium is 90%, which can be reached within days from the 60% mark.

Iran’s nuclear program has also advanced in ways that go beyond what was listed in the IAEA report. 

The Islamic Republic continues construction on an underground nuclear facility in Natanz, set to be completed in two to three years, that is said to be so deep that it would be impervious to U.S. air strikes. 

In addition, while Western intelligence assessments generally say that Iran has not begun weaponization – the stage during which enriched uranium is turned into a bomb and attached to a missile – which could take as long as a year, the timing remains unclear.

Dubowitz said that, in his assessment, preliminary weaponization activities could have begun without intelligence agencies’ taking notice: “It may be computer modeling, or certain activities explained away for dual-use purposes … The assumption is that Khamenei hasn’t made the decision to go to a bomb, but when he does, we’ll know because of U.S. and Israeli intelligence capabilities. But what if it’s just ambitious scientists who want to be in a position to impress the boss, so that when he says ‘let’s go,’ they can say ‘we’re months ahead of schedule’? … I think weaponization needs a real hard look.”

The U.K., France and Germany – known as the E3 – plan to submit a censure resolution at an IAEA board meeting next week.

“The E3 is indeed pushing for a more robust stance at the next board meeting, given the recent lack of cooperation from Iran,” a European diplomatic source told Jewish Insider. “It could take the form of a board resolution, pending negotiation.”

While the U.S. had decided to abstain and pressured other countries to follow suit, the source confirmed a report that Washington has since accepted that the E3 is persisting with a censure and indicated they would likely back it.

Dubowitz said that in meetings in London and Paris he found “deep frustration about [President Joe] Biden’s Iran strategy – they think he has no Iran strategy.”

American hesitation to censure Iran shows that “Iran is deterring the U.S. and the U.S. is not deterring Iran,” Brodsky said. “There needs to be a censure resolution and a referral to the U.N. Security Council is long overdue … We also need to snap back sanctions, but the E3 won’t do it without U.S. support.”

Brodsky lamented that Biden’s staff “want to keep the Iran file off the president’s desk” before this year’s election, “but that’s not a strategy; that’s a Band-Aid and a very fragile Band-Aid.”

Dubowitz was skeptical that the Biden administration would shift from its “complete unwillingness to use power” against Iran even if he is reelected.

“Israel needs to assume the worst and be surprised on the upside,” he said. “Assume you’re alone on Iran … and ask the Americans for the support and capabilities you need, but don’t assume the Americans will take care of this.” 

Brodsky said Israel’s next move “should be working very hard to persuade the U.S. and Europeans to snap back sanctions … That would lull the Iranians out of their complacency that they could just continuously expand their nuclear program without cost.”

Sabti said that Israel should constantly raise the Iranian issue with the international community and “cannot separate Iran’s [sponsorship of] terrorism and its nuclear program. That was a terrible mistake.”

“Terrorism doesn’t make the nuclear issue disappear,” or vice versa, he stated, “just sometimes one hand is stretched out longer than the other.”