Former CIA Director and retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus told Newsmax on Friday that the U.S. and Israel will never let Iran have a nuclear bomb, even though the Islamic regime is close to developing weapons-grade uranium.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said earlier this week that Iran is weeks rather than months away from possessing enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Iran reportedly has uranium enriched at 60% and needs it to reach 90% to be weapons-grade.

“What the head of the IAEA is saying is that it would only take a few weeks for them to go from the current stage of enrichment, which is about 60%, to weapons-grade, which is roughly 90%,” Petraeus told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.” “That, I think, is absolutely correct. And they have enough of the 60% that they could produce enough weapons-grade for a bomb.

“The question then is, How long would it take them to weaponize that? There’s a lot of debate about that. The bottom line, though, is that the Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon than at any time in the past.”

Petraeus said it might be a dangerous moment, but Iran would have to take several steps from getting the enriched material to producing a bomb. Eventually, he said, the U.S. and Israel will not allow that to happen.

“We have the visibility necessary to know if they try to go down this course,” he said. “I’m actually quite confident that both the U.S. and Israel will live up to their policy, which is that we will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Petraeus said that “there’s a number of leaps” for Iran to get a nuclear weapon.

“First, you have to get to weapons-grade uranium; then you have to shape it into the kind of object that with a trigger could reach critical mass. And, again, there are various ranges on how quickly Iran would be able to do that. And then the question is, of course, How would they deliver it? And that’s not a trivial issue either.

“But the bottom line is that I think our policy is quite clear that we would prevent that from happening.”

Petraeus said when he led U.S. Central Command from 2008-2010, “we developed a plan to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and also rehearsed it at that moment, as well.” He said Israel doesn’t have all the capabilities the U.S. has to destroy Iran’s nuclear program by itself and will need to rely on help from the U.S.

“It’s publicly known that the largest munition that’s required for some of that operational plan exceeds the capacity of their aircraft to carry, and they don’t have it anyway,” Petraeus said. “The U.S. would necessarily be involved in this. And, again, that is in line with policy of presidents of both parties for many years.”

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