Over the past few days, I’ve watched with amazement just how fast our nations have mobilized to attempt to stop the spread of the latest covid-19 variant, omicron. In Israel, it took less than 24 hours for the government to shut the borders to all foreigners. That’s right, all foreigners were barred, not just those attempting to return from southern Africa. It didn’t matter that omicron had yet to kill or even hospitalize anyone. Israel decided to act fast, just in case omicron turned out to be deadly.

Doing nothing meant risking everything, said the experts. This, of course, wasn’t just Israel’s knee-jerk reaction to the potential threat of omicron—most of the Western democracies followed suit.

When it comes to a threat to public health, our governments now act first and ask questions later. It simply isn’t worth the risk to delay; that could be too late. It would be playing with fire.

Yet outside the world of covid-19, our leaders seem perfectly willing to play with fire. And sometimes that fire is nuclear.

On Monday, the same day Israel shut its borders, world powers assembled in Vienna, Austria, to negotiate once again with Iran over its nuclear weapons program.

These talks aren’t making headlines like omicron; but they should be.

If our leaders were truly concerned about imminent threats to public health, about acting swiftly to prevent mass casualties, then a gigantic spotlight would be on the nuclear talks.

Did you know that Iran is now closer to the bomb than at any time in the past?

Did you know that should Iran push forward with its enrichment, it is just three weeks away from acquiring enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb; two months later it could have enough uranium for two bombs. Less than two months after that, it would have enough uranium for three bombs.

This is a real public health crisis, one that poses a risk far greater than omicron, and yet where is the international response? Where are the knee-jerk reactions? Where is the unified international front to powerfully act against a real nuclear threat?

Likely the only nation paying much attention to the nuclear talks is little Israel. The Jewish state understands that, as enemy number one, Israel has the most to lose from Iran’s push toward the bomb. Israeli media are alight with coverage of the talks. But not because Israelis are hopeful the talks will accomplish anything positive.

Israeli commentators are mostly anxious to see how much the Biden administration will give up to appease Iran further. Even the left-leaning Israeli government has no confidence that Biden’s America will curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

It’s clear that Iran doesn’t fear anything the Biden administration could do.

On Wednesday, as Iran sat across the table to negotiate its program, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had started up its advanced centrifuges spinning at Fordow. Until now, only the slow centrifuges had been used to enrich uranium at Fordow. Now, the underground facility has a cluster of 166 advanced centrifuges spinning.

In response to Iran’s brazen move, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett asked the United States not to give in to “nuclear blackmail.” In a call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, Bennett called on Israel’s greatest ally to end the negotiations immediately.

Imagine it: Iran is openly pushing forward its nuclear weapons program even as it sits down to negotiate.

Clearly, this is not a regime that fears any knee-jerk responses from the United States—that response is reserved for omicron. When it comes to this public health crisis, the Biden administration moves slowly, considering all of its “options” as it lazily talks it over with the mullahs.

What’s worse, it is starting to look like America is preparing to accept Iran’s full enrichment to weapons grade. Already there is messaging from the Biden administration that it will do little to stop Iran’s centrifuges from spinning.

On October 24, the leader of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, sat down for an interview with Biden-friendly Time magazine. The resulting article was titled “They’re Very Close.’ U.S. General Says Iran Is Nearly Able to Build a Nuclear Weapon,” which seems to convey that McKenzie was raising alarm over Iran’s nuclear breakout. But that was not the purpose of the piece.

Instead, its purpose was to convey that Iran having enough uranium for the bomb was not really that important. It focused on whether Iran had perfected the ability to use the weapons-grade uranium for a weapon. Notice:

Even if Tehran decides to amass enough fuel for a bomb, McKenzie says, the nation hasn’t yet standardized a design for a warhead that’s small enough to be affixed atop any of its arsenal of 3,000 ballistic missiles. Nor has Iran shown that it can build a reentry vehicle capable of surviving the searing heat, pressure and vibration of falling from space back to Earth. “We haven’t seen any of that,” McKenzie says. “That’s what’s going to take a little time for them to build.” He estimates it would take Iran more than a year to develop this capability with a robust testing program.

Basically, the message is, Even if they get to weapons-grade uranium, everything will still be OK. We will still have probably more than a year to stop Iran.

This same message was found inside a recent Axios report that was based on a leak by two “United States sources.” The piece headline indicated the story was about how Iran is preparing to enrich to weapons-grade uranium based on Israeli intelligence. Again, like Time, two paragraphs down the author writes, “Enrichment alone will not produce a bomb. Estimates vary as to how long it would take Iran to master the additional technological requirements, but U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources have put the timeline at one to two years.”

Again, the message here is to prepare the public for the U.S.’s acceptance of full nuclear enrichment to weapons-grade.

This is a huge change in the U.S. policy regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The key metric for raising awareness of Iran’s march toward the bomb has always been the amount and purity of its enriched uranium.

Now, in the lead-up to the talks, the United States has begun to say it doesn’t matter how much enriched uranium Iran has if it still can’t deliver a nuclear weapon.

This is a terrifyingly deceitful change in policy. In doing so, America has provided the perfect cover for Iran to reach weapons-grade (and potentially a nuclear weapon) without lifting a finger.

It’s true that Iran needs to figure out the delivery system and some other details; however, these details are far easier to conceal than the production of nuclear fuel. It is a nuclear explosion-size risk to allow Iran to produce nuclear fuel and rely on your intelligence that it doesn’t already have the ability to deliver it on a warhead. In fact, plenty of evidence suggests Iran has imported much of the technology and know-how about the delivery system from North Korea.

Notice what esteemed nuclear experts David Albright and Sarah Burkhard of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote about this in 2020. They believe that the amount of weapons-grade uranium a nation has is the essential metric to watch for. They wrote (emphasis added):

Breakout estimates do not include the additional time that Iran would need to convert wgu (weapons grade uranium) into weapons components and manufacture a nuclear weapon. This extra time could be substantial, particularly if Iran wanted to build a reliable warhead for a ballistic missile. However, these preparations would most likely be conducted at secret sites and would be difficult to detect; many relevant activities may have been ongoing for years. If Iran successfully produced enough wgu for a nuclear weapon, the ensuing weaponization process might not be detectable until Iran tested its nuclear device underground or otherwise revealed its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In other words, if we give Iran a pass on having the enriched uranium for a bomb, we could be waking up one morning to reports of an Iranian nuclear explosion!

Albright and Bukhard continued, “Therefore, the most practical strategy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons remains preventing it from ever accumulating sufficient nuclear explosive material, particularly in secret or without adequate warning.”

That might be the understanding of the scientists, but it is no longer the policy of the United States. America is covering for Iran as it pushes toward nuclear breakout.

Again, Iran is now three weeks away from attaining nuclear breakout, and the message from the U.S. is that there is nothing to worry about.

Instead, it’s omicron that must be feared. The latest covid variant is the public health emergency that brings swift mitigating action. Shut the borders on covid-19, but do nothing to stop the fanatical regime in Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Something is terribly wrong with this reasoning. And truthfully, it cannot be explained by naivety or even a belief that an appeasing Iran will work. The United States policy to empower Iran, even to the extent of providing cover for its nuclear weapons program, is deliberate. In fact, we saw this policy at work during Barack Obama’s presidency, and now it is back under his puppet Biden. Except now, the risk to the world is far more dire.

Read Chapter 6 of Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s booklet Great Again to understand the hidden cause for America’s empowerment of Iran. To understand how a nuclear-armed Iran will impact biblical prophecy, please request Nuclear Armageddon Is ‘At the Door.’