Benjamin Netanyahu Says Deal Would Give Iran Bomb in Year

Image by getty images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday the framework Iranian nuclear agreement being sought by international negotiators will leave Iran with the capability to develop a nuclear weapon in under a year.
For nearly a week, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have been trying to break an impasse in talks aimed at keeping Iran from just that in exchange for easing international sanctions that are crippling its economy.
“It appears the deal being formed in Lausanne will leave Iran with underground facilities, the nuclear reactor in Arak and with advanced centrifuges,” Netanyahu said at a parliamentary ceremony.
“The breakout time for Iran to obtain fissile material for nuclear bombs will not take years as was said at the beginning, in our estimation it will be reduced to under a year and perhaps far less than that,” he said.
Israel – believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal and which has in the past threatened Iran with military attack – sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
With a deadline hours away, Iran and six world powers ramped up the pace on Tuesday in negotiations over a preliminary deal, though officials warned that any agreement was likely to be fragile and incomplete.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 4
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.