 Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by one of the USA's top nuclear experts. The new assessment comes as the White House invited Senate staffers to a briefing on negotiations with Iran as it is trying to persuade Congress not to go ahead with a bill to stiffen sanctions against Iran. Iran’s recently elected president, Hassan Rouhani, is considered a centrist among Iranian officials and faces growing criticism from hardliners that Mr. Rouhani and the US-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, are conceding too much to the US. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented crippling economic sanctions on Iran to sway it to take steps to assure the world it is not developing a bomb.
– In just a month, Iran could have enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb, a US expert says. "Breakout times"—a reference to the period needed to get weapons-grade uranium from low-enriched uranium—"are currently too short and shortening further." The findings, from the Institute for Science and International Security, are based on Iranian and UN data on nuclear progress, USA Today notes. The White House is currently urging Congress to hold off on potential tougher sanctions on the country. Meanwhile, however, some US officials say new nuclear talks with Iran are going well. "I have never had such intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian delegation before," says a negotiator, per the Christian Science Monitor. Indeed, an Iranian lawmaker says the country isn't currently enriching uranium to 20% purity, a point at which it's easy to make weapons-grade stuff, the Monitor notes. MP Hossein Naqavi Hosseini says there's "no need for further production" of 20%-enriched uranium, the Telegraph reports. Such a halt is one of the West's central goals in negotiations, the Monitor reports. Hosseini, however, isn't a government spokesman or nuclear negotiator, the AP notes.