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Why Trump Was Confident that Iran Was Building a Bomb

(Washington Post) David Ignatius - After a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, what's next is a period of negotiations. Israel wants a verifiable, ironclad agreement to prevent Iran from ever producing a nuclear weapon. Negotiators will confront this essential problem: Iran has been lying about its activities for more than 20 years. It said it wasn't trying to make a bomb even as it had its top scientists push toward weaponization. It claimed to be leveling with the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the IAEA concluded last month that it wasn't. Israeli intelligence, backed by IAEA investigations, shows that after Iran ceased its Amad weaponization program in 2003, it secretly reconstituted a new effort to pursue similar research. The Iranians moved equipment from one set of secret sites to other covert locations, covering their tracks to evade IAEA inspectors, Israel and IAEA found. This renewed push to make a bomb - as opposed to just enriching the fuel for one - was probably the trigger for the devastating war that Israel began on June 13. Israeli intelligence on Iranian weaponization was shared with me by a source familiar with the reports. Much of it tracks IAEA reports published on June 12 with the agency's stern warning that it couldn't "provide assurance that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful." Trump has received much more detailed information from Israel, and officials say that's why he stated last week that Iran was actively seeking to build a weapon, despite a statement to the contrary in March by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Based on what I saw, I would be surprised if the House and Senate intelligence committees didn't conclude that U.S. analysts were being too cautious in preparing Gabbard's March 26 testimony that the intelligence community "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon." Iran's renewed weaponization program was called SPND, known in English as the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, according to an Israeli document. A key site at Shariati, in Tehran, "is part of Iran's concealment and deception efforts" and houses some of its technical laboratories and workshops. The site was struck by Israeli jets on June 13. Another key site, Sanjarian, near Parchin, produced detonators. It was also struck last week by Israeli jets. Iran's weaponization infrastructure is now in ruins. Israel has destroyed the equipment - and killed the researchers - that were part of a secret bombmaking effort dating back 25 years. Any future nuclear agreement with Iran must reliably ban any restart of these activities.
2025-06-25 00:00:00
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