Iran’s Missile Program: A Major Omission in the Nuclear Deal

A nuclear weapons program has three legs: producing nuclear fuel, constructing a nuclear warhead, and delivery systems.  Although the nuclear agreement being finalized with Iran is supposed to address the first two factors, the last one has been completely ignored.

Iran’s ballistic missile program is the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East.  Iran is not constructing long-range missiles  and ICBMs to lift monkeys into space.  The purpose of Iran’s missiles is to launch nuclear warheads against Israel, Europe and the United States.

Not only is Iran’s missile program being left out of a nuclear agreement with Iran, the agreement will lift all UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran over this program.

On June 2, the Hudson Institute hosted an excellent panel on  Iran’s missile program with Representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Dr. David Cooper, Michael Eisenstadt, and Dr. Thomas Karako.   Hudson Adjunct Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs moderated the event.

Rep. DeSantis gave a great introduction on this issue and his concerns about the nuclear talks.  All the panelists were very good, especially Eisenstadt who discussed how Iran appears to be constructing missiles to accommodate a “tri-conic” nuclear warhead design that he believes Iran acquired from Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.  (Eisenstadt discusses this at 28:05.)

You can watch this panel below.

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