What We Know About Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

A former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency says Israel needs to think carefully before bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.
What We Know About Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program
A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. shows Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, in Iran on April 14, 2021. Planet Labs via AP
Chris Summers
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News Analysis

As the conflict between Israel and Iran, and Iran’s 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 spoke 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.

On Oct. 26, Israel bombed several military targets inside Iran in retaliation for an Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel on Oct. 1.

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.”

He said Ali Khamenei, who took over as supreme leader in 1989, “systematically intensified” the nuclear weapons program in the early 1990s and saw it “as a strategic guarantee for the regime’s survival.”

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.”

In May, the IAEA reported that Iran was producing approximately 11 kilograms (24 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent uranium-235 per month.

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.

“They have enough material for half a dozen, or 10, nuclear weapons,” he said.

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 it 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran's nuclear program at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran's nuclear program at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

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.”

The NCRI has published most of this information on its website.
In 2010, Frank Pabian, a senior adviser on nuclear nonproliferation at Los Alamos National Laboratory, told The New York Times that the NCRI “were right 90 percent of the time.”

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.

In May 2003, after the NCRI exposed the existence of the secret Lavizan-Shian site in Tehran, which they said was the “command center for the nuclear weaponization project,” the regime razed it and dispersed its experts and equipment to other locations, he said.

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.

The NCRI says the Iranian regime has been “preparing the ground” for revealing the nuclear weapons program.

‘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.”

He added, “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.

Mohammad Reza 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.

On Oct. 12, Brig. Gen. Rasool Sanaei-Rad, a senior adviser to Khamenei, said Iran could change its nuclear doctrine if Israel were to attack its atomic facilities.

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.”
Protesters gather on the West Front Lawn for a rally against the Iran nuclear deal at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 9, 2015. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Protesters gather on the West Front Lawn for a rally against the Iran nuclear deal at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 9, 2015. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

But renewed sanctions were thwarted by Biden in February 2021, a month after he was inaugurated.

If Trump returns to the White House by winning the Nov. 5 election, he may press the United Nations to take action against Iran.

‘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.”

The NCRI is calling on the international community to activate the “snapback mechanism” in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which would reactivate the suspended resolutions concerning the regime’s nuclear projects and resurrect full economic sanctions.

“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.

On Oct. 29, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed a group of ambassadors in Tehran and made a statement about the Israeli attack at the weekend.

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.”

Chris Summers
Chris Summers
Author
Chris Summers is a UK-based journalist covering a wide range of national stories, with a particular interest in crime, policing and the law.