Iran Continues Secret Nuke Tests: Documents

In 2007, regime planned 4-year push to develop bomb trigger
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 14, 2009 1:30 PM CST
Iran Continues Secret Nuke Tests: Documents
An Iranian Shahab-3 missile, a weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Europe, Israel and US forces in the Middle East.   (AP Photo)

Iran was testing a crucial component of a nuclear bomb as recently as 2007, leading many experts to believe the country is currently engaged in a weapons program despite its protestations to the contrary. Secret 2007 documents obtained by the Times of London describe a four-year plan to work with an essential piece of a neutron initiator. “Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes,” an expert says, but “there is no civil application.”

The documents, which have been reviewed by Western intelligence agencies, also clearly indicate the testing program was intended to be carried out behind the façade of Iran’s civil nuclear effort. “Is this the smoking gun?” another expert wonders, noting that an ongoing weapons program—which Iran says it abandoned in 2003—is forbidden by the international community “It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium.” (More Iranian nuclear program stories.)

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