Iran Update, February 9, 2025
Siddhant Kishore, Katherine Wells, Andie Parry and Nicholas Carl
Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET
The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) publish the Iran Update, which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests.
Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations, and here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of the ongoing opposition offensive in Syria. These maps are updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
NOTE: CTP and ISW publish abbreviated updates on Saturdays and Sundays as of February 8, 2025. We may publish full updates as events warrant, however.
Senior Iranian military leaders have urged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in recent months to approve the construction of a nuclear weapon, according to an unspecified Iranian official speaking to the Telegraph.[1] The article reported that the military leaders have previously supported Khamenei’s policy against nuclear weapons but now feel that they are faced with an “existential threat” since US President Donald Trump entered office. The unspecified Iranian official said that “we have never been this vulnerable, and it may be our last change to obtain [a nuclear weapon] before its too late.” The official added that the Khamenei’s decisions to forbid nuclear weapons and negotiations with the United States is “driving the regime toward collapse.”[2] The official claimed that Iran has been “just a few button presses away from building a nuclear weapon for some time now.”[3] This article follows the New York Times reporting that Iranian scientists are exploring how to build a crude nuclear weapon quickly.[4] ...
[Short citation of 8% of the original article]