Iran Vows to Resume Nuclear Program Despite War, as Israel Setbacks Tehran’s Atomic Ambitions

by Worthy News Jerusalem Bureau Staff

(Worthy News) – Iran announced Tuesday that it plans to press ahead with its nuclear program despite its recent military clash with Israel. Mohammad Eslami, head of the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the state-run Mehr news agency that Tehran aims to avoid any disruption in its nuclear industry, though he did not clarify whether that included military activities.

“We planned to avoid any interruption in the nuclear industry process,” Eslami said. “Preparations for the revival [of the nuclear program] were foreseen in advance, and our plan is to not allow any interruption in the production and service process.”

The announcement comes after Israel launched a sweeping military campaign earlier this month, aimed at neutralizing what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as an existential threat from Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The Israeli operation followed the expiration of a 60-day deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump for nuclear negotiations with Iran, after Tehran refused to halt uranium enrichment.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Mariano Grossi welcomed the ceasefire and urged Iran to resume cooperation with the nuclear watchdog. “Resuming cooperation with the IAEA is key to a successful agreement,” Grossi posted on X, revealing he had written to Iran’s foreign minister to propose new talks.

Meanwhile, Israel claims its campaign has significantly set back Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. “The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years,” Israel’s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, told The Associated Press. Zarka said at least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers had been killed in Israeli strikes.

Yet nuclear experts warn that Tehran retains deep reserves of scientific expertise. “Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of Ph.D. students will be able to figure it out,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. diplomat and analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Doing both [destroying facilities and killing scientists] will set it back further, but it will be reconstituted.”

Iranian state media reported Tuesday that another top scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, was killed in an Israeli strike after surviving a previous attack that claimed his teenage son’s life.

European leaders are calling for a diplomatic solution, warning that military action cannot erase Iran’s nuclear knowledge. “Strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

How quickly Iran can revive its program depends largely on the status of its enriched uranium stockpiles and key equipment, analysts say. “Once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known,” noted Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based nuclear analyst.

As the dust settles over Iran’s shattered nuclear infrastructure, the regime stands in a fragile position, its icons of power decimated. The question now is whether diplomacy can seize this moment — or whether the region will reset, only to plunge into an even more dangerous phase of conflict in the years ahead.

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