Several experts in international security and non-proliferation joined with representatives of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to discuss the current status of Iran’s nuclear ambitions following the 20th anniversary of the first public revelations about the country’s nuclear weapons program.
On August 14, 2002, the NCRI held a press conference in Washington to provide details about ongoing work with relevance to nuclear weapons, at clandestine sites near the Iranian cities of Natanz and Arak. The ensuing global scrutiny soon prompted the Iranian regime to acknowledge the existence of those two sites, while the International Atomic Energy Agency initiated an investigation and monitoring process that persists to this day.
That investigation has been continually informed by disclosures from the NCRI, of which there have been more than 100 over the past 20 years, according to Soona Samsami of the NCRI’s US representative office. “Were it not for those revelations, the most active state sponsor of terror would have had the most dangerous weapon by now,” she said in Wednesday’s conference, while also arguing that the lack of a decisive international response to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions has allowed it to make the sorts of advances that are on prominent display amidst fledgling negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The Iranian regime systematically has been violating its committees by enriching uranium to higher levels and in larger quantities than permitted under the JCPOA, while also installing arrays of advanced centrifuges that would allow even more rapid enrichment in the future. Now, the regime is routinely enriching uranium to 60 percent fissile purity, well above the 20-percent maximum it had achieved prior to the signing of the JCPOA, and just a short technical step away from weapons-grade.
The regime and its apologists have frequently attempted to frame those advancements as reversible penalties for the US withdrawal. But IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has acknowledged that Iran’s nuclear program has grown beyond the point at which the JCPOA’s original terms would constrain it effectively. Meanwhile, Iranian regime officials and institutions have been using those advancements to openly boast about the prospect of “breaking out” to nuclear weapons capability.
November 27, 2021, Fereydoun Abbasi, former head of #Iran regime’s Atomic Energy Organization, confessed in an interview, that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the assassinated former head of the regime’s nuclear weapons project, had created a system to produce a nuclear bomb. #IAEA 11/ pic.twitter.com/QYux6XOEvi
— Alireza Jafarzadeh (@A_Jafarzadeh) June 7, 2022
In July, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior advisor to the regime’s supreme leader, told state media that it was “it’s no secret that we have the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later reiterated that claim, emphasizing that enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade could take place at the facility in Fordo which is heavily fortified against aerial attack. The IRGC went on to threaten that this would be exactly the outcome if Western adversaries made “any mistake”.
The seriousness of such threats is underscored by the fact that terrorist plots throughout the world continue to be revealed as having originated in Tehran. Just last week, the US Department of Justice unsealed its case against one IRGC member who had actively sought assassins to kill John Bolton, the former US national security advisor.
Bolton happened to be among the speakers at the NCRI’s conference, where he argued against continued dialogue with a regime that openly threatens Western lives and interests while pursuing nuclear weapons by deceptive means.
“For 20-plus years, this regime has lied about its nuclear program,” Bolton said. “Therefore, in case of any deal made, the reality is that the regime will not comply with it.”
The conference provided numerous examples of Tehran’s dishonest trend by reviewing various prior NCRI revelations on topics that the regime had kept hidden. These include revelations of individual sites like a centrifuge testing facility at Kala Electric as well as broad details of the nuclear program’s make-up, such as its 2011 consolidation into the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research.
The NCRI presented these details on Wednesday as evidence to support claims from Bolton and others about the extreme likelihood of the regime’s non-compliance with future agreements. As Soona Samsami put it: “The indisputable fact has been and [remains] that the regime in Tehran will never abandon its [pursuit of a] nuclear weapon because it views it as a guarantee for its survival.”
After echoing Bolton’s assertion that Tehran is inherently untrustworthy, former US Senator Joseph Lieberman said in his remarks to the conference, “This regime will never change its behavior. So our policy should be to support regime change.”
Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Deputy Director of the NCRI’s Washington office, implied that this outcome might have been achievable nearly 20 years ago, had Western powers taken steps to halt Iran’s nuclear activities altogether, thereby removing that source of leverage and force projection.
“We provided an almost complete picture of the nuclear weapons program of the regime; the regime was on the ropes,” Jafarzadeh said. “There was the best opportunity for the world to stop its nuclear weapons program in its early stages. Instead, the EU, with US backing, rushed to the help of the regime and started negotiating with it, providing them with concessions, and eventually legitimized its enrichment program and watched the regime as they moved to build the bomb step-by-step.”
Accusations of appeasement have been strengthened in recent days by Tehran’s continued stonewalling of a negotiating process that some parties predicted to conclude late last year. Last week, the European Union’s coordinator for the nuclear negotiations presented what was deemed the “final text” of an agreement to restore the JCPOA. On Monday, the regime responded by once again insisting upon Western capitulation to demands that had already been conclusively rejected.
While refusal to accept the draft agreement reflects the regime’s firm commitment to nuclear breakout, the corresponding refusal to walk away from the JCPOA reflects a need to project strength in dealings with Western adversaries. That need is perhaps stronger than ever right now, as Tehran faces near-constant popular unrest with roots in the MEK-led uprisings of 2018 and 2019. That unrest sooner or later will lead directly to the Iranian people’s overthrowing the mullahs’ dictatorship. Now the question is if the Western powers would take the right side in that conflict.
