alt Hacker Newsthere are many reasons to do nuclear research beyond medicine, for batteries like the ones powering the voyager space craft, nuclear reactors come in a wide variety of configurations, and many of them actualy produce more radioactive elements that then need to be managed. 60% is nothing,80% is nothing, it needs to be 93%++, and LOTS of it to build a bomb, and given the number of bombs already arrayed around Iran, they would need 100's and all the infrastructure to become a credible threat , for which they plainly dont have the money to afford. The wildly unpopular leaders going after Iran need a scapegoat, or rather a continious supply of scapegoats, but have failed to recognise that the world is moving past them.
60% is actually very close to 93%. To go from natural uranium (<1% U235) to 60% represents the vast majority of the effort. From 60% to 93% is actually quite quick; most of the material is already U235. And they already have enough to build maybe a dozen bombs.
They also have (had?) a very active ballistic missile program, and have conducted implosion experiments.
The constellation of evidence is quite clear: Iran is a threshold nuclear state with all the pieces necessary to credibly threaten the region (and soon the US homeland) with nuclear weapons.