No Evidence Iran Pursuing Nuclear Weapon, CIA Director Says

The CIA hasn't seen any evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, agency director William Burns told a security conference on Monday.

"No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program,” said Burns in remarks at The Cipher Brief's 2024 Threat Conference in Sea Island, Georgia, as reported by NBC News. 

Burns perspective comes as the State of Israel says it's planning a "serious and significant" response to Iran's barrage of some 200 ballistic missiles fired at Israel last week. The Iranian strike followed Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the Lebanese political and militant organization Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran.

As the world awaits Israel's next step up the escalation ladder, there has been speculation that Iranian nuclear reactors and related facilities may be among the IDF's targets. President Biden told reporters he wouldn't support Israel striking nuclear targets, while former President Trump said Israel should "hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later." 

Burns did caution that, thanks to Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and several major powers, Iran “is in a much closer position to produce a bomb’s worth of ... enriched material for a single weapon.”

Under that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran had taken on an unprecedented degree of external supervision of its nuclear program, dismantled centrifuges, filled its heavy water reactor with concrete, and shipped uranium out of the country, all in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions. When Trump killed the deal and reimposed sanctions, Iran began ignoring restrictions imposed by the treaty.  

Burns told the audience that, under the JCPOA's restrictions, it would have taken Iran more than a year to accumulate the requisite amount of enriched uranium to build a bomb. “Now it’s probably more like a week or a little more to produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade material," he said, "so the risks have increased."

Of course, it's one thing to obtain enriched uranium, and another altogether to build a functioning, deliverable nuclear warhead. By some estimates, that could require up to a year, NBC notes. In any event, Burns emphasized that, under close, ongoing scrutiny of Iran, the CIA hasn't seen any indication of an Iranian intent to build a nuclear bomb:  

“We don’t see evidence today that such a decision has been made. We watch it very carefully. I think we are reasonably confident that — working with our friends and allies — we will be able to see it relatively early on. But ... the great danger in a way is that time frame has been compressed in ways which create new challenges for us.”

In 2005, Khamenei issued a fatwa declaring that, according to an Iranian government summary of his remarks, "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and... the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons." The religious edict against nuclear weapons followed Iran's earlier refusal to reciprocate when Saddam Hussein's Iraq used mustard gas and other chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilians during the Iran-Iraq War. The US government knowingly abetted Iraq's employment of chemical weapons. 

This week's anticipation of a potential Israeli targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities comes amid social media speculation over a 4.5 magnitude seismic event in Iran's desert on Saturday, with various non-seismologist posters suggesting that, rather than an earthquake, the vibrations may have been caused by a nuclear weapon test. 

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization rejects those theories, according to Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov. He took to Telegram, writing: 

"In connection with the seismic events in Iran on October 5 there were speculations that they were probably caused by nuclear tests. CTBTO analyzed signals from its 25 stations and came to the conclusion that recorded waveforms were consistent with previous earthquakes in Iran."  

Along with his interventionist allies in the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming Iran is on the brink of building a nuclear weapon since 1992. In 2003, he infamously told the US Congress: 

"There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons—no question whatsoever...Every indication we have is that (Saddam) is…pursuing with abandon, pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons."

Remember how that turned out for thousands of American service members and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis?