Tehran is advancing its secret nuclear program, bringing the Islamic Republic closer to building atomic bombs, Iran International reported on Wednesday.

Three independent sources in Iran told the London-based opposition media outlet that the regime is moving forward with its nuclear weapons program “by restructuring the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), retaining Mohammad Eslami as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and resuming tests to produce nuclear bomb detonators.”

The Biden administration privately warned Tehran in June about its research and development activities, Axios reported on July 17, citing three Israeli and U.S. officials.

According to the report, both Israeli and American officials have detected suspicious activities by Iranian scientists in recent months.

“Officials fear they could be part of a covert Iranian effort to use the period around the U.S. presidential election to make progress toward nuclear weaponization,” the article states.

American and Israeli officials met in Washington in mid-July, discussing “mutual coordination on a series of measures to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon,” the White House said.

A Western diplomat told Iran International that the Islamic Republic’s suspicious nuclear activities have raised concerns in Washington, Jerusalem and European capitals.

After the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, the head of Hamas’s political bureau in Tehran said that Iran’s deterrence policy, which relies heavily on its regional terrorist proxies, has lost its effectiveness. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking government officials are aware of this, according to the report.

The report suggests that the blows to its proxies might lead Tehran to consider nuclear weapons as a method of deterrence, quoting Iranian lawmaker Mohammad-Reza Sabbaghian from an open session of parliament on the day that new President Masoud Pezeshkian presented his ministerial picks.

“What logic or law dictates that arrogant powers should have nuclear weapons, but Iran should not?” Sabbaghian asked rhetorically.

“We call on the Supreme National Security Council to review the new circumstances and recommend to the supreme leader that, considering dynamic Islamic jurisprudence, the path be cleared for the development of nuclear weapons.”

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