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Iran Needs to Come Clean on Nuclear Military Plans

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: David Albright, President, Institute for Science and International Security
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

May 29, 2008

David Albright, a leading expert on Iranian nuclear issues, says the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report (PDF) on Iran indicates that "the situation has gotten worse." Iran continues to develop nuclear centrifuges to make enriched uranium and refuses to answer questions about its past military nuclear activities. "Collectively, the information suggests that Iran did have an ambition both to build nuclear weapons and to create a civil nuclear industry." Albright says the Bush administration should agree to talks with Iran without conditions to test the waters.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has just published another interim report on its dealings with Iran over its nuclear program. Can you explain in layman's terms where we are?

The situation has gotten worse. Iran continues to make progress building and operating centrifuges able to enrich more uranium. At the same time, it's not answering the IAEA's questions about Iran's past nuclear activities.

And these activities include possible military activities that the IAEA has received information on from the United States and other countries?

That's right. The IAEA received information from the United States, from Israel, and from other countries pointing to Iran's work on nuclear weapons prior to 2004. And the information that the IAEA collected is listed in this report. Overall the information is pretty compelling that Iran was working on aspects of development of a nuclear weapon. The information doesn't include all the tasks that you need to do to make a nuclear weapon; it's about a subset of those tasks. But the information itself, collectively, is pretty compelling and requires some kind of answer from Iran. Iran needs to produce evidence that it's all not true, or explain what it is and perhaps even admit to having worked on nuclear weapons.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.