US and Israeli officials have repeatedly claimed since the early 1990s that Iran was on the verge of getting a bomb, but expert and intelligence assessments show Iran has never actually built a nuclear weapon and was usually years—not months—from a deliverable device.[1][2][3]
US/Israeli public claims have depicted an almost continuous “imminent” Iranian bomb threat since the early 1990s, but intelligence and IAEA findings show a pre‑2003 weapons program that was halted, followed by a long period where Iran stayed a threshold state—dangerous but not actually weaponizing.[1][2][3][4]