‘Iran considered nuclear weapons during 1980s’

Former Iranian president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani indirectly admitted that his country started a nuclear weapons program during the Iran-Iraq war. “But it never became real”, he said in the interview, which was carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday.

“We implemented part of our nuclear activity when we were still at war and Iraq was close to securing enrichment when Israel destroyed all of it. Of course, the first time it was on 20 September 1980 that our air force used four fighters to bomb the nuclear facility in Osirak that was nearly completed and about to receive fuel …”

“Our basic doctrine was always a peaceful nuclear application, but it never left our mind that if one day we should be threatened and it was imperative, we should be able to go down the other path”, he added.

According to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei never issued an official fatwa against nuclear weapons, at least not one for which there is any official record.

Much of this work was performed when Rafsanjani himself was Iran’s president, from 1989 to 1997.

The NCRI report also mentioned Khamenei’s reported fatwa banning nuclear weapons, saying that it was for “foreign consumption’. In any case, they agreed to help us a bit”.

“The statement by Rafsanjani is an unequivocal testimony to the fact that the Iranian regime, from the onset until present, and under direct supervision of Khamenei and Rafsanjani, has been in search of the nuclear weapon and has never abandoned it”, NCRI said in a statement.

Iranian leaders have insisted repeatedly that Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Iran fought a devastating war against Iraq in the 1980s.

The comments by Rafsanjani, which do not appear on IRNA’s English website, were first reported on by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a dissident group of Iranian exiles. In a 2009 interview – given after he had served five years under house imprisonment – Khan said that “since Iran was an important Muslim country, we wished Iran to acquire this technology”.

In addition, Rafsanjani acknowledged in this interview that Iran received nuclear technology from Pakistan’s nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The reason that this is a big deal is that these admissions may mean that Iran has been violating the terms of the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory.

“I don’t want to skip Iowa, I think we are going to do great with the evangelicals”, Trump told the crowd. So if the war had not occurred, then Saddam could have freely developed WMDs, and we presumably would not know to this day whether he was doing so – which he nearly certainly would be doing.

In his interview, Rafsanjani has come out publicly challenging Khamenei’s orders. According to these revelations, on 10 September 1992, during Rafsanjani’s visit to China where he had taken along a number of nuclear experts, they signed a broad secret agreement for nuclear cooperation with the Chinese that only sections of which were made public.