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Iran's Nuclear Archive Shows It Planned to Build Five Nuclear Weapons by 2003
(Institute for Science and International Security) David Albright, Olli Heinonen, and Andrea Stricker - According to the Nuclear Archive that Israel seized in Tehran earlier this year, by the end of 2003 Iran had put in place the infrastructure for a comprehensive nuclear weapons program. Iran intended to build five nuclear warheads by 2003, each with an explosive yield of 10 kilotons and able to be delivered by ballistic missile. Iran was preparing to conduct an underground test of a nuclear weapon, if necessary. The end goal was to have tested, deliverable nuclear weapons, and Iran made more progress toward that goal than was known before the seizure of the archives. It is the responsibility of the IAEA and member states to ensure that Iran's nuclear weapons program is ended in an irretrievable permanent manner, pursuant to in-depth verification that has not yet been carried out under Iran's comprehensive safeguards agreement, its provisional implementation of the Additional Protocol, and the JCPOA. Absence of progress on this critical issue is largely due to lack of Iranian cooperation. Moreover, there is no visible indication that the IAEA is yet acting on the new information.