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Mostly bargaining chip, deterrence, and option to try to create a nuclear weapon in the future. That is not the same as "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon now" which would constitute "imminent threat." The notion of "imminent threat" that could justifiably bring the world to the brink like it has now is important. There has been no evidence presented to anyone for "imminent threat", which is why the story is so inconsistent and has waffled between "they were going to attack the US" (no evidence) and "they are an imminent nuclear threat" (no evidence).
The Iranians also enriched that material after Trump reneged on the previous Iran deal. So is this responding to an imminent threat, or is this pretext for war on top of a planned controversy over this issue? Who was it again that lobbied most heavily for Trump to exit the Iranian nuclear deal in his first term?
So Trump breaks the deal, Iran starts enriching again, and then Witkoff and Kushner declare "imminent threat" on the mere existence of enriched material that Iran has proposed to hand over to the US as part of an agreement.
The Iranian offer to handover the highly-enriched material threw a wrench into the works, most likely, hence why the 20% enrichment for the Tehran Research Reactor is the "best" Wiktoff/Kushner could come up with to convince Trump of some "imminent threat" to justify another war for Israel.
This is some kind of conjugated tense more subtle than even the most complicated of romance languages. What's the meaningful difference between "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon [{now}]" and "they are trying to develop [{now}] the ability to develop a nuclear weapon [{in the future}]" -- ? I'm not asking this question now by the way I'm trying to ask this question in the future.
Sure it's a subtle distinction but it's important to determine the threat-level. An actual nuclear bomb is a technology that requires the integration of many components, highly enriched uranium being one of the most important for sure. You can say "the engine manufacturer is trying to build a car", eh not really it's trying to build an engine. If you extended the logic to "well the engine would only be used in a car so they are building the car" then that would extend to Iran's missile program as well.
Iran is a country with highly competent engineers, the US stratotanker was shot down yesterday (killing 6) by an in-house developed anti-air missile. The notion Iran has been trying but unable to engineer this 1940s technology is false, it has not been trying to build a nuclear bomb, and this is attested to by all the international agencies who have weighed in and no intelligence has been provided suggesting otherwise. I already described the reasoning Iran had for enriching the nuclear material.
Most likely the plan was for this highly enriched stockpile to form the basis for "imminent threat" to muddy the waters in exactly this way. "Their highly enriched stockpile means they are trying to build a nuclear bomb now", even if that's not actually true, at least muddies the water with respect to Iran's motives.
But Iran offered to hand over that highly-enriched material in an agreement with the US. My take is that this offer, demonstrating actual good-faith towards a likely agreement, was their death sentence as they got bombed immediately after making that major concession.
But now Witkoff and Kushner can't point to that highly enriched stockpile to say "Iran was trying to build a bomb." So the Witkoff narrative shifts to the controversy over the 20% enrichment for the TRR which doesn't even come close anymore to the notion that Iran was trying to build a nuclear bomb, and we had to bomb them in the middle of negotiations in order to stop them.
The truth is that Witkoff and Kushner were not hampered in those negotiations by a lack of expertise. They had access to the highest expertise in the world to achieve their objectives of the negotiation, and their objectives were war with Iran. The idea that Witkoff misunderstood the enrichment for TRR as being an imminent threat to build a nuke is not true at all. The progression of the negotiations weakened the narrative, so they pulled the plug and worked with what they had to get the US started in the war.
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