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Nuclear Archive Shows that Iran Camouflaged Its Nuclear Weapons Program
(The Hill) David Albright and Olli Heinonen - Israel's acquisition in early 2018 of a significant portion of Iran's nuclear archive, which details an effort to build five nuclear weapons and prepare an underground nuclear test site in the early 2000s, has revealed an unpleasant truth: Iran has been in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 2015 nuclear deal, and other non-proliferation commitments. Instead of demanding a nuclear standard for Iran that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has applied to other countries, however, many are turning a blind eye to Tehran's dangerous transgressions. The seized archive shows a robust program in the early 2000s to build nuclear weapons. Under intense international pressure in 2003, Iran downsized it, but the archive shows that instead of ending it, Iran reoriented its nuclear weapons program to survive as a smaller, more camouflaged one. This archive clearly is designed to be used to preserve and reconstitute a path to an atomic arsenal. The documents show that Iran's atomic ambitions were much further along than previously known. Most worrisome, breakout time for a missile-deliverable nuclear warhead was much shorter than U.S. officials thought likely. David Albright is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Olli Heinonen is former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its Department of Safeguards.