US President Donald Trump continues to weigh a tentative agreement with Tehran. As Trump has offered various justifications for starting the war with Iran, he has repeatedly cited its nuclear program, which has also been a key sticking point in negotiations to end the conflict.
Washington was in talks with Tehran about its nuclear program before the US and Israel struck Iran. Trump has expressed his desire to ensure Iran “never have a nuclear weapon,” despite Iran’s insistence that it was not pursuing this.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on Iran and nuclear weapons says that there were concerns about Iran’s uranium enrichment since the early 2000s.
In 2015, Tehran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which capped uranium enrichment for 15 years and facilitated UN-led inspections to ensure adherence to the deal.
Trump abandoned the JCPOA in 2018, during his first term.
A US assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability published in 2024 said that while “Iran (was) not building a nuclear weapon,” it had, however, “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses.”
The US and Israel’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities was assessed by US intelligence to have buried much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile at Esfahan, but didn’t destroy it, despite administration statements that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.”
The highly enriched uranium that Iran currently is determined to have could reach weapons-grade purity within weeks or even days, according to some nuclear experts — if Iran has an operational enrichment facility.
However, just days after the strikes on Iran, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, told CNN that Tehran was not days or weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. Iran shut out international nuclear inspectors the following month.
