(National Interest) Matthew Zweig and Behnam Ben Taleblu - One year ago, Israeli agents broke into a facility near Tehran that contained the carefully preserved documentation from Iran's long-denied nuclear weapons program. Patient analysis of the contents has shown that Iran was much closer to a nuclear weapons capability than previously understood. The extensive amount of equipment, material, software, and other information found in the archive - including blueprints, spreadsheets, charts, photos, and videos - clearly demonstrates the scale of Iran's efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and, in fact, a nuclear weapon itself. That Iran believed it was necessary to preserve this information in an extensive warehouse reinforces concerns that it has never abandoned its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. The retention of the archive is an indicator of future Iranian intentions to which Tehran will return when the JCPOA's restrictions expire. Matthew Zweig, a former senior professional staff member at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at FDD who has aided efforts to translate portions of the nuclear archive.
2019-03-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive