As the conflict between Israel and Iran, and its proxies, continues unabated, there is increasing interest in whether the Iranians have the capability to produce a nuclear bomb.
Iran is still denying it is trying to produce nuclear weapons, despite a mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise.
So what is the reality?
The Epoch Times has spoken to a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ollie Heinonen, and a key figure in the Iranian opposition, Shahin Gobadi, about Iran’s nuclear program.
But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appeared to have complied with pressure from U.S. President Joe Biden and avoided hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities, instead targeting air defense, missile and drone production, and launch sites.
Earlier this month, CIA Director William Burns said the United States had not seen any evidence that Iran’s leader had reversed a 2003 decision to suspend its nuclear weapons program.
But the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of Iranian opposition groups, says the regime in Tehran has been lying to the world for years.
Gobadi, a member of the NCRI’s foreign affairs committee, told The Epoch Times, “The Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons began in the mid-1980s, following the approval of Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s founder.”
Nuclear Bomb Is Iran’s ‘Objective’
“From the outset, the primary objective of the nuclear program has been to obtain a bomb,” Gobadi said.“Equipment purchased under the guise of civilian use, even for university research, has ultimately been repurposed for the nuclear weapons program.”
Heinonen said it could take “days” for Iran to go from 60 percent to weapons-grade enriched uranium.
But he pointed out enrichment was only one of the processes needed to create a nuclear weapon, the others being “weaponization” and creating a delivery system.
Heinonen said that while North Korea is more advanced than Iran in its development of nuclear weapons, Iran might be able to speed things up and might not even need to test weapons before using them.
Iran Could Create 10 Bombs ’the Scale of Hiroshima’
Heinonen said the Iranians could produce 10 small nuclear warheads; “tactical nuclear weapons the scale of Hiroshima, or even smaller,” he said.Up to 100,000 people died instantly when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and thousands more died of radiation poisoning later.
Heinonen said Iran already has long-range missiles that could feasibly deliver a nuclear warhead but that they may still be several months away from having the capability of creating even a single warhead.
“First, they have to turn it into uranium metal alloy in order to manufacture the components themselves,” he said.
He said there were three components to making nuclear weapons.
“One is the actual nuclear fissionable material, which is in this case, high-enriched uranium,” he said.
“Then there’s the warhead, the package where you put this high-enriched uranium, and it has all the electronics, high explosives, around it in order to create the nuclear detonation.
“And then you need to put this physical package inside a missile.”
In February the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, said the Iranians had continued to enrich uranium well beyond the needs for commercial nuclear use.
But Heinonen said, “The stumbling block here, most likely, is actually making the actual new components of the weapon.”
Gobadi said the NCRI had a network of whistleblowers in Iran who have, over the past three decades, given information to prove the regime was involved in a “vigorous pursuit of a nuclear weapons project, under the command and supervision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
Gobadi said the secret nuclear weapons program was initially called the Physics Research Center and then became known as the Amad Plan, and since 2011, has operated under the name Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, a part of Iran’s Defense Ministry.
He said the Iranians had concealed details about its research and personnel from the IAEA.
If Iran were to target Israel with another missile strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might be tempted to strike at the Natanz nuclear enrichment complex.
“The first question you have always to think is what does Iran do next?” Heinonen said.
“Because when you bomb a nuclear installation like this, actually, you won’t eliminate the nuclear program because it’s in several locations, some of them are underground ... they may also have a secret facility, like they had in 2003, you just may not know about it.”
He said bombing Natanz might give the “wrong illusion” that Iran’s nuclear program had been destroyed.
In 1981, Israel’s air force bombed Iraq’s unfinished nuclear reactor at Osirak. But that only forced then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to become more secretive about whether he possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Heinonen said the enriched uranium that the Iranians had already produced had likely been moved to a “secret location,” which, he said, even the CIA did not know about.
“So when you trigger attacks like that, you have to think about the consequences and risks,” he told The Epoch Times.
‘Iron Fists’ in ’Velvet Gloves’
On Oct. 5, Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini, said in state-run media: “Our military deterrence must rise to a higher level. This deterrence is based on power, not smiles.“I support any negotiations, but velvet gloves must cover iron fists. If your hands are not made of iron, they will be crushed.
“Our military deterrence must rise to a higher level. The world has reached a point today where we need to strengthen our deterrence.”
Four days later, 39 members of the Iranian Parliament wrote a letter to the Supreme National Security Council calling on the regime to change its defense doctrine and include nuclear weapons.
Mohammadreza Sabaghian, an Iranian parliamentarian, said they would ask Khamenei “if he deems it appropriate, to change the strategy and fatwa regarding the construction of nuclear weapons.”
“Building a nuclear weapon will be easy for us,” Sabaghian added.
Trump’s Sanctions Plan Thwarted
In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of former President Barack Obama’s U.S.–Iran nuclear deal and sought to resume full economic sanctions, saying, “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.”
But renewed sanctions were thwarted by Biden in February 2021, a month after he was inaugurated.
‘Grave Threat to Iranian People’
Gobadi said the NCRI were not traitors to Iran but acted out of “patriotic duty.”“Iran’s nuclear program, particularly the pursuit of nuclear weapons, poses a grave threat to the Iranian people,” he said.
“The clerical regime has pursued such a project, spending hundreds of billions of dollars solely for its survival.”
“Delays and hesitations give religious fascism the time and opportunity for its sinister plans. The final solution to save Iran and the region from the regime’s nuclear threat is the overthrow of this regime by the people and the Iranian resistance,” Gobadi said.
Iran has denied having a nuclear weapons program.
Araghchi did not mention nuclear weapons but said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran is fully prepared to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security against any aggression, and the great Iranian nation is fully prepared to establish peace in the region and engage in constructive interaction with its neighbors.”
