Seized Archives Reveal Iran's Nuclear Program "...Certainly Larger, More Sophisticated And Better Organized' Than Thought

Seized archive shows Iran nuke project was larger than thought, had foreign help

The archive of Iranian nuclear documents seized by the Israeli Mossad from a Tehran warehouse in January shows that Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons “was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized” than was suspected, unnamed nuclear experts were quoted as saying in the New York Times on Monday, after being shown selected documents from the haul by US reporters.

One of the Iranian documents specifies plans to build a first “batch of five weapons” and discusses sites for possible underground nuclear tests, the Times reported, after one of its reporters was given limited access to the haul last week, along with a reporter from the Washington Post, and another from the Wall Street Journal.

“None were built, possibly because the Iranians feared being caught, or because a campaign by American and Israeli intelligence agencies to sabotage the effort, with cyberattacks and disclosures of key facilities, took its toll,” said the Times.

“It’s quite good,” Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer and former inspector for the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, told The Times dryly, after being shown some of the documents. “The papers show these guys were working on nuclear bombs.”

The documents also reinforce Israel’s contention that Iran remains determined to attain a nuclear weapons archive, despite its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal (the JCPOA), the US reporters noted.

The materials they were shown include documentation that names current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a member of the “Council for Advanced Technologies” that approved the rogue nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post said, and indicate “a supporting role by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as the Quds Force. Previously released documents indicate that the Iranian army was charged with overseeing the conversion of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade fuel suitable for nuclear bombs.

“Let there be no mistake: the amount of personnel in the overt and covert parts will not decrease,” it quoted an Iranian official writing in a memo dated September 3, 2003. “The structure will not become smaller, and every sub-project will supervise both its overt and covert parts.”

The seized archive “explains why the [nuclear deal] to us is worse than nothing, because it leaves key parts of the nuclear program unaddressed,” the Israeli official said, echoing Netanyahu’s frequent contention. “It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb. It paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

The Washington Post said US intelligence agencies have long believed that “Iran has kept the intellectual core of its nuclear program intact.” And the  documents showcased by Israel detail several meetings in late 2003 in which the Iranian nuclear project chiefs “discuss ways to keep the program’s scientists busy with nuclear-relevant research,” even after it was ostensibly frozen.