Peter Pry: Iran probably already has nuclear weapons

Originally published by The Mackenzie Institute

Some in Washington want to bomb Iran for attacking Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.  But what if Iran has nuclear missiles?

Intelligence failure can kill thousands, as Washington learned on December 7, 1941, and should have learned again on September 11, 2001.  Intelligence failure in the nuclear missile age can destroy entire nations.

Washington officialdom believes Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons based on little more than wishful thinking and blind faith in an Intelligence Community deeply corrupted by the Obama Administration—and still unreformed by President Trump.

Three years ago, senior Reagan and Clinton administration officials warned that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons.  See “Underestimating Nuclear Missile Threats from North Korea and Iran” National Review February 12, 2016:

“Iran is following North Korea’s example — as a strategic partner allied by treaty and pledged to share scientific and military technology. Iran sacrificed its overt civilian nuclear program to deceive the Obama administration, to lift international sanctions, to prevent Western military action, while a clandestine military nuclear program no doubt continues underground. That is why Iran, under the nuclear deal, will not allow inspection of its military facilities and prohibits interviewing scientists — it is concealing the dimensions and status of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.”

“We assess, from U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency reports and other sources, that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. Over 13 years ago, prior to 2003, Iran was manufacturing nuclear-weapon components, like bridge-wire detonators and neutron initiators, performing non-fissile explosive experiments of an implosion nuclear device, and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile.”

“Thirteen years ago Iran was already a threshold nuclear-missile state. It is implausible that Iran suspended its program for over a decade for a nuclear deal with President Obama.”

The above assessment is by Ambassador R. James Woolsey, President Clinton’s Director of Central Intelligence; Dr. William Graham, President Reagan’s White House Science Advisor, leader of NASA, and recently Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission; Fritz Ermarth, a national security advisor to President Reagan and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; and Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

These stellar intelligence officers, strategic thinkers, and scientists played major roles helping win the Cold War.  Perhaps we should listen to them now about Iran:

“Iran probably has nuclear warheads for the Shahab-III medium-range missile, which they tested for making EMP attacks…Iran already has the largest medium-range ballistic-missile force in the Middle East.”

“Iran could be building a nuclear-capable missile force, partly hidden in tunnels, as suggested by its dramatic revelation of a vast underground missile-basing system last year. Iran is building toward a large, deployable, survivable, war-fighting missile force — to which nuclear weapons can be swiftly added as they are manufactured.”

“And at a time of its choosing, Iran could launch a surprise EMP attack against the United States by satellite, as they have apparently practiced with help from North Korea.”

More recently, David Albright, former nuclear inspector for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, and Ollie Heinonen, former Deputy Director General of IAEA, published an Institute for Science and International Security report based on Iran’s secret nuclear weapon archives clandestinely obtained by Israel’s Mossad:

“The archive shows that the AMAD program intended to build five nuclear warhead systems for missile delivery and possible use in preparation for an underground nuclear test; an actual test would require a decision to proceed. The program was also partially designed to have its own independent uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment resources. The documentation indicates that Iran’s nuclear weaponization efforts did not stop after 2003…”

“The United States incorrectly assessed with high confidence in a 2007 declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that ‘in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.’ Based on the information in the archives, Iran’s nuclear weapons program continued after 2003…Moreover, the 2007 NIE also incorrectly asserted that Iran had not re-started its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007…However, there is no evidence that the program was ever fully halted, even up to today.”

“The information in the archive evaluated so far does not answer the question of what the current status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program is…”

Assessments that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons assume erroneously: our intelligence is perfect, Iran’s civilian nuclear program is all there is, no clandestine nuclear weapons program exists in Iran’s numerous underground military facilities—including unaccounted uranium and plutonium facilities for fueling nuclear weapons, as in North Korea.

Where Iran is concerned, our Intelligence Community appears to have learned nothing from its spectacular failures grossly underestimating the nuclear threat from North Korea.  Does the Intelligence Community even want to know the truth about Iran’s Islamic bomb?

Reza Kahlili, the only CIA operative to successfully penetrate the scientific wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, claimed Iran does have nuclear weapons and offered to procure photographs.  Obama’s Intelligence Community was not interested, and is still not interested

President Trump has inherited an Intelligence Community that disagrees with him about almost everything, including his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.  According to the Intelligence Community, Iran is in technical compliance with the nuclear deal, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).

But if Iran already has nuclear weapons, Iran was never in compliance with JCPOA, and the Intelligence Community can chalk-up another major intelligence failure, potentially far more consequential than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

If Iran has the bomb, why have they not yet attacked “the Great Satan” that is the United States?

Radical Islamist cleric Nasir al-Fahd’s May 2003 fatwa “A Treatise On The Legal Status Of Using Weapons Of Mass Destruction Against Infidels” may provide a clue.  Although al-Fahd is a Sunni sympathetic to al Qaeda, his rules for a nuclear holocaust against Infidels may well govern the thinking of the Shiite mullahs who run Iran too:

–First, under Islam’s “Just War Doctrine” the Infidels have to be given an opportunity to convert to Islam, before they can be destroyed.  This Iran’s leaders have done repeatedly, most prominently former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University (September 24, 2007) and at least twice at the United Nations (September 23, 2009 and September 26, 2012) about “the current world order based on injustice” and the virtues of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

–Next, a “final solution” against Infidels cannot be implemented except in a defensive war to protect the Ummah, the community or territory of Islam.  So a U.S. bombing campaign, especially one that threatens regime change in Iran, would justify nuclear annihilation of “the Great Satan”.

Is it possible Iran is deliberately trying to provoke the U.S. to attack, so the Mullahs can in “self-defense” come out of the nuclear closet by blasting a U.S. aircraft carrier, or making an EMP attack on North America?

By the way, “political correctness” under the Obama and Bush administrations, unfortunately continuing today, forbids the Intelligence Community from analyzing the ideology of radical Islam (the so-called “religion of peace”) for purposes of strategic warning or waging the Global War on Terrorism.  Consequently, the best and brightest counterterrorism and Islamist experts were purged from the Intelligence Community.

We should be treating Iran like a nuclear weapons state, with the same prudent caution used toward North Korea.  Let’s not learn the hard way that Iran already has its Islamic Bomb.

Appended to this article is a more comprehensive assessment of evidence Iran already has nuclear weapons that I wrote in 2016, drawing upon my training as a CIA Intelligence Officer and professional lifetime as a national security scholar.  Whether from bias or wishful thinking, compelling evidence Iran already has nuclear weapons, and warnings by prominent intelligence and national security experts from the U.S. and Israel, is largely ignored, as if this legitimate opinion is under a news blackout.