Kamal Kharrazi, Iran’s former foreign minister who now is a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, finally acknowledged the obvious: Iran has sought the technical ability to build a nuclear bomb.
We have long known Iran’s intentions for two reasons.
First, the logical flaws at the heart of Iran’s claims that it needed nuclear power and, second, two decades of statements by those surrounding the supreme leader that a nuclear weapon was the goal. Iran’s civilian nuclear drive never made sense. Iranian officials have explained they want an indigenous energy supply for which they need up to eight nuclear power plants. Because the U.S. Geological Service surveyed Iran extensively prior to the 1979 revolution, the U.S. government knows exactly how much natural uranium Iran has: enough, when enriched to fuel grade, to power those eight plants for 15 years. In contrast, a modest refurbishment and upgrade to Iran’s refinery and pipeline network could enable the country to power itself with gas and oil for three centuries at a fraction of the price. While climate activists may wring their hands at Tehran tapping fossil fuels, remember: Iran is among the most seismically active countries on the planet. Any nuclear reactor, civilian or otherwise, is a ticking environmental time bomb.
Nor has Iran’s secrecy made sense if its motives were pure. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allowed Iran to build a civilian nuclear reactor. What raised suspicion — and ultimately led the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council — was Iran’s persistent lying to inspectors, as well as its documented nuclear work on nuclear triggers, warhead design, and other activities that have much more to do with destroying a city than powering one. That Iran hid its nuclear archives from inspectors gives ample reason for distrust.
However, the statements of Iranian officials give even more cause for concern. Here are just three.
- On Dec. 14, 2001, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, at the time easily the second or third most powerful man in Iran, declared, “The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while (the same) against the Islamic world would only cause damage. Such a scenario is not inconceivable.”
- On Feb. 14, 2005, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, secretary-general of Iranian Hezbollah, said, “We are able to produce atomic bombs, and we will do that. We shouldn’t be afraid of anyone. The U.S. is not more than a barking dog.”
- On Feb. 18, 2006, the “reformist” newspaper Rooz quoted Mohsen Gharavian, a Qom theologian close to Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a chief regime ideologue, as saying it was only “natural” for the Islamic Republic to possess nuclear weapons.
As American partisans engaged in a circular firing squad, they failed to give Iranian leaders credit for their own agency. While President Mohammad Khatami charmed the world with his offers of a “Dialogue of Civilizations” (a dialogue that never included Israel), his own aides bragged about how they hoodwinked Western officials with false engagement so that sanctions would not interfere with their covert nuclear program.
That Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden subsequently lifted, waived, or refused to enforce those sanctions changed not Iran’s behavior but rather its rhetoric.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
