By Greg Sarber
On March 17, Joe Kent resigned his position as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), saying, “Iran posed no imminent threat to our country, and that it was clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel”. He disagreed with President Trump, who said that Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon and could pose a threat to our country and our allies in the Middle East. From the outside, it is difficult to know who to believe. They both have access to information we do not, but there is enough public information available to shed light on this issue, so let’s examine the facts that we can verify.
One of the things that complicates this subject is understanding Uranium enrichment, so first, a bit of science. Although Uranium is a fairly common element found in nature, in its natural form, Uranium consists mostly of an isotope called U-238, which has no value as a nuclear fuel or weapon. Over 99.2% of naturally occurring uranium is U-238. The valuable component of naturally occurring Uranium is the isotope U-235, which is a very small percentage of naturally occurring Uranium at only 0.71% concentration. There is very little of it, and it is extremely challenging to separate these two isotopes, which requires a significant amount of time and expensive precision equipment.
To make fuel for nuclear power plants, Uranium is normally enriched to the point that it contains between 3%-5% U-235. For a nuclear weapon, it takes at least 60% enrichment as a minimum level to make a low-yield nuclear weapon, although most militaries strive to achieve 90% enrichment for a more reliable and powerful detonation.
In a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released last September, the IAEA determined that Iran had 440.9 Kg of uranium enriched to 60% at that time, with the ability to produce an additional 9.0 kg per month. This is a far higher enrichment level than is needed for any civilian purpose. The only use for uranium that has been enriched to this level is to construct nuclear weapons.
This information, provided by the IAEA, was confirmed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi just before the war broke out. He confirmed that Iran had 440 KG of 60% uranium, which was enough to make 10 bombs. Minister Araghchi indicated that in discussions with the US, Iran was willing to negotiate giving it up or diluting it to lower enrichment levels in return for concessions from the United States.
So, the first conclusion we can draw from this information is that President Trump was correct. Iran did possess a significant quantity of Uranium enriched to at least the minimum level to build nuclear weapons, and it knew that it could build multiple bombs with it, but were they about to do so?
When he resigned, Joe Kent said that Iran didn’t intend to weaponize the Uranium it had to make a bomb. He repeated that statement the next day on Tucker Carlson’s show and stated the following: “I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling, a fatwa, against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s been in place since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere, but then also we had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed, or it was on the cusp of being lifted.”
So, if we believe Mr. Kent, the Iranians spent a considerable time and money enriching uranium to a level useful for making a bomb, they possessed the ability to continue making more of it, and they kept doing so, but because of an old religious edict, they were just going to just make it, but not use it. That is a pretty difficult story to believe.
Joe Kent is asking us to trust the Iranians. These are the same Iranians who said before the war that their missiles were limited to a 2,000 Km range, and yet on March 20th, they attacked the Diego Garcia air base with a missile that flew 4,000 Km, proving that the Iranians don’t always tell us the truth.
We could debate back and forth about whether Joe Kent or President Trump is correct when it comes to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but we don’t have to. A report was released yesterday that sheds more light on the matter. According to Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, on February 28th, he received information that a meeting had been scheduled in the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office to discuss giving final approval to Iranian General Hossein Jabal Amelian to activate containerized mobile centrifuge equipment to begin the enrichment of Iran’s Uranium to 93% and to transfer the enriched U-235 to bomb cores. This meeting, which was held on the day the war started, was intended to begin the weaponization process for Iran’s Uranium.
Fortunately, the United States had an agent in Tehran who provided advanced warning of this meeting and what the subject of discussion was. It was this meeting that prompted the timing of the attack on Iran. The first target of our attack was the Supreme Leader’s office, where this gathering of experts was meeting.
Critics will dismiss this as a convenient cover story, planted by the government, intended to justify the war. Which it could be. None of us is on the inside, so we don’t know for sure, but it sounds plausible. Given the choice of who to believe, while Joe Kent seems to be a sincere, nice guy, I trust President Trump. If the Timmerman story is right, then the president was justified in attacking the Iranians. I would rather believe in President Trump than believe the fairy tale that a bunch of religious fanatics would build a nuclear weapon and not use it.
President Trump is doing what is necessary to keep the country safe, and if I have to pump expensive gas into my vehicle for a little while, why he does so, I am ok with it. Consider the alternative.
Citations:
https://x.com/joekent16jan19/status/2033897242986209689
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enriched-uranium-worth-bargaining-for/
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-02/news/iran-accelerates-highly-enriched-uranium-production
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enriched-uranium-worth-bargaining-for/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-steve-witkoff-iran-enriched-uranium-11-nuclear-bombs/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/03/trump_was_right_about_iran_s_bomb.html
This story was reprinted with permission from the author. It was originally published 3/26/26 on “Seward’s Folly” the author’s Substack.
Greg Sarber is a lifelong Alaskan. He is a petroleum engineer who spent his career working on Alaska’s North Slope. Now retired, he lives with his family in Homer, Alaska. Greg is a former board member of Alaska Gold Communications, Inc., the publisher of Must Read Alaska.
