Iran's attack on Israel shines spotlight on Tehran's advancing nuclear weapons program

After Iran's first-ever massive aerial bombardment of Israel, Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program is front-and-center in the minds of security experts.

On Sunday, after rejecting calls that the Biden administration was too soft on Tehran, the White House National Security Communication spokesperson, John Kirby told Fox News' Shannon Bream that "Iran is so much dramatically closer to a potential nuclear weapon capability than they were before Mr. Trump was elected." Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal.

David Albright, a physicist who is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital that "Iran would need a year or more to build a semi-reliable warhead for a ballistic missile and about two years to reconstitute the Amad Plan so as to be able to serially produce reliable warheads for ballistic missiles, i.e., have a fully developed nuclear weapons production complex." 

Iran's regime pursued an atomic weapons program code named the Amad Plan from the late 1990s to early 2003.