Was Iran really racing for nukes?

IN 2002, AT a time when America was gripped by fears of an Iraqi nuclear bomb, an Iranian opposition group held a press conference to reveal a dramatic discovery. Iran, it said, had built a facility to enrich uranium into what could eventually become bomb fuel. The location was near the city of Natanz, in Isfahan province. On June 13th explosions rang out at Natanz, one of many targets across the country hit by Israeli bombs. “In recent months,” claimed Israel, Iran had “raised its involvement in advancing the readiness of all necessary components to assemble nuclear weapons.”

Iran fervently denies that it has ever pursued nuclear weapons. That is not true. In the 1980s the Islamic Republic began importing nuclear equipment and material from Pakistan and China. And in the 1990s it approved and allocated funds for a plan to manufacture five nuclear weapons and carry out an underground nuclear test, according to documents acquired by Israel and analysed by experts at Harvard University’s Belfer Centre. That decision was approved by a committee that included Ali Shamkhani, who was then the defence minister. Mr Shamkhani, serving as political adviser to Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was killed by an Israeli strike on June 13th.

This formal nuclear weapons programme, Project AMAD, was suspended by the Iranian government in 2003, according to an American “national intelligence estimate” published in 2007. It is unclear why. It might have been because Saddam Hussein, Iran’s main threat, had just been toppled in Iraq; or because American troops were poised on either side of Iran, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also becoming clear that Western intelligence agencies had deeply penetrated the supply chains that Iran relied on, and that Iran’s nuclear sites were being exposed. But Iran’s nuclear journey did not stop there.

Iran capped its enrichment capacity and stockpile of enriched uranium in a deal reached with America and other major powers in 2015. But Donald Trump abandoned that deal in 2018. Iran’s nuclear programme has grown dramatically since then. In May the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, said that Iran had acquired more than 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which is a short hop to weapons-grade. That would be enough for ten bombs, if the material were to be enriched further.

In parallel, Iran continued to fortify its nuclear sites against attack. On June 12th, shortly after being rebuked by the IAEA’s board of governors, Iran said it would open a new enrichment site. That could explain recent excavations near Natanz. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert, says that Iran has been digging an underground facility 80 to 100 metres under a mountain. The estimated size of the facility, based on displaced material, is more than 10,000 square metres—larger than Fordow (pictured), Iran’s most deeply buried enrichment plant.

More importantly, despite halting its formal weapons programme, Iran continued to pursue some weapons-related research even after 2003. “There was a decision… to continue some work to fill in technical gaps,” notes the Belfer assessment, “some of it open, with civilian cover stories, and some of it covert.” About 70% of the staff from AMAD were transferred to a new programme, the SPND, led by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist, according to Israeli documents. The IAEA has also pointed to evidence of Iranian computer modelling of the process of implosion, part of a bomb design, as recently as 2009. That was also the year in which America, Britain and France publicly revealed Iran’s construction of Fordow.

The evidence is murky on what has happened more recently, however. Israeli officials, justifying their attack, claim that there had been a “major acceleration” in Iran’s nuclear programme, bringing Iran “significantly closer” to a bomb. They point to Iranian work on uranium cores, neutron sources (which trigger an explosion) and plastic explosives. But it is not clear how much of that is genuinely new. And Israel’s allies have seemed less concerned. In March Tulsi Gabbard, America’s director of national intelligence, told Congress that American intelligence agencies believed that the pre-2003 programme remained in abeyance: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

Iran’s nuclear dabbling had certainly become more fragmented and disorganised after the assassination of Mr Fakhrizadeh, probably by Israel, in 2020. There is no single figure co-ordinating whatever was left of nuclear weapons research. Some units in Iran’s programme were thought to be conducting research without telling policymakers. An Israeli source told The Economist earlier this year that “there are now at least five or six Fakhrizadehs and they’re much harder to get at.” That certainly does not suggest a resurrection of Project AMAD or the dogged pursuit of a bomb at all costs. It is more consistent with the conclusions of the American intelligence assessment in 2007: that Iran was keeping its options open.

The question is whether Israel can do lasting damage (see chart). The strikes on June 13th might have targeted many of those half-a-dozen Fakhrizadehs. The Israeli military says that it has damaged the centrifuge hall of Natanz, the underground chamber where centrifuges enrich uranium, though it is unclear how badly. At the time of writing, Israel has not attacked Fordow or another nuclear research site in the city of Isfahan, though both places might be hit in later waves.

A crucial question, says Ian Stewart of the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, is whether Israel has found and destroyed Iran’s stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium. “Hiding modest quantities away would allow Iran to finish the modest enrichment step in secret with a small number of centrifuges,” he warns. “Iran could also claim that some of the enriched uranium was lost in the strikes.” Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons has waxed and waned for over 40 years. But it has never disappeared entirely. And it could now be pushed even further underground.■