Western intelligence officials are reportedly growing increasingly concerned about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as new activity has been spotted at facilities that it used in the past when it was working to develop its own nuclear weapons.
The activity comes as G7 Foreign Ministers condemned Iran this week “in the strongest possible terms” for supplying Russia with missiles for its illegal war in Ukraine. The U.S. says that in exchange for the weapons, Russia is giving Iran “secret information and technology that could bring it closer to being able to build nuclear weapons,” Bloomberg News reported.
During recent talks between the U.S. and the U.K., top officials said that Iran’s nuclear program “had never been more advanced.”
Iran has continued to rapidly increase their stockpile of enriched uranium, in direct violation of the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which would shorten the amount time needed to build a nuclear weapon to about a week if they decided to build one.
The Institute for Science and International Security said in a report last week that Western intelligence officials had provided it with information and satellite images showing new activities that are taking place at two former Amad Plan sites, which were key to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons back in the early 2000s.
“The two sites, Sanjarian and Golab Dareh, were central to the Amad Plan’s development of a sophisticated multipoint initiation (MPI) system to initiate the high explosives for spherical implosion in a nuclear weapon, to develop and test high-speed diagnostic equipment or their subcomponents, and to conduct a range of tests to ensure that the MPI system and diagnostic equipment worked,” the report said.
Officials said that the new activity was being conducted by experts who participated in the Iran’s previous work to develop nuclear weapons.
The new activity at the facility reportedly included “high explosive tests and technical research and development of a sensitive nature.”
Satellite imagery shows a significant increase in activity at the facilities throughout the course of the Biden-Harris administration as the U.S. has reversed course from the Trump administration’s hardline policies toward Iran. Activity at the site has picked up dramatically over the last year and a half, the report said.
