Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of Israeli military intelligence, warned Monday that Iran could soon approach the 90% uranium enrichment level necessary to build a nuclear weapon, Axios reported.
"We are getting closer to the point where Iran will toy with enriching uranium to 90%, even if it will only be symbolic and in very small quantities at the beginning," Haliva said at an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv.
The shocking move would still require a "few years or many, many months" to build a capable nuclear device, but suggested "the only thing holding them back" on flirting with the idea is how their Qatari allies would respond.
Haliva also commented on the agency's view of the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran, which he believes "have already shifted, to a degree, to the realm of a popular uprising," according to Iran International.
"When you look at some of the incidents, even the hours at which they are taking place, the damage to national institutions, to symbols of the state, at the number of fatalities, there is something different happening here that is greatly troubling the regime," he stated.
But Haliva cautioned, "at this point in time, I see no real danger to the regime."
The news comes several months after Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Al-Jazeera that in just a "few days," the country was "able to enrich uranium up to 60%," with 90% more than plausible.
"Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb, but there has been no decision by Iran to build one," Kharrazi assured.
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