William Burns, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, told the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council on Monday that the US intelligence agency “doesn’t see any evidence that Iran’s Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] has made a decision to move to weaponize.”

At the same time, Burns was skeptical about Iran’s intentions in the current negotiations with the Biden administration focused on returning the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“The Iranians have not been taking the negotiation seriously at this point,” Burns said, adding, “We’ll see soon enough about how serious they are.”

Mossad Director David Barnea is currently in Washington to meet with Burns and other senior US officials and it is to be expected that the Iranian nuclear program will be one of the top items on their itinerary.

Last month, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi hinted that his country was close to being a nuclear power.

“We have more than 210 kilograms [463 pounds] of uranium enriched to 20 percent, and we’ve produced 25 kilos [55 pounds] at 60%, a level that no country apart from those with nuclear arms are able to produce,” Kamalvandi said.

In order to create a nuclear weapon, uranium has to be enriched to 90%. Under the JCPOA, Iran was barred from enriching uranium above 3.67%. 

The CIA statement comes in the wake of reports in Israeli media that the US government sent high-level messages to top Israeli security officials saying that the White House opposes any intelligence operations against Iran. The White House believes that such operations may endanger the current negotiations with Iran.

This US request came after Mossad chief David Barnea said that his agency will take any action needed to prevent Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons.

“Iran will not have nuclear weapons, not in the coming years, not ever,” Barnea was quoted as saying in YNet. “That is my promise, that is Mossad’s promise.”

Israel has a history of carrying out intelligence operations against Iran’s nuclear program. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that a Mossad operation stole 110,000 documents, videos, and photographs that proved unequivocally that Iran had lied in the 2015 JCPOA negotiations. 

Israel may be surreptitiously taking direct action against Iran’s nuclear program. Over the last 13 years, Israel has been accused of assassinating at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists and numerous successful acts of sabotage targeting nuclear facilities. 

The CIA’s credibility has taken a beating lately. Over the past 14 years, the Central Intelligence Agency has secretly amassed credible evidence that at least 10 of its employees and contractors committed sexual crimes involving children. Though most of these cases were referred to US attorneys for prosecution, only one of the individuals was ever charged with a crime while the rest were dealt with through internal investigations.