Iran Continues Secret Nuke Tests: Documents

Iran was testing a crucial component of a nuclear bomb as recently as 2007, leading many experts to believe the country is currently engaged in a weapons program despite its protestations to the contrary. Secret 2007 documents obtained by the Times of London describe a four-year plan to work with an essential piece of a neutron initiator. “Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes,” an expert says, but “there is no civil application.”

The documents, which have been reviewed by Western intelligence agencies, also clearly indicate the testing program was intended to be carried out behind the façade of Iran’s civil nuclear effort. “Is this the smoking gun?” another expert wonders, noting that an ongoing weapons program—which Iran says it abandoned in 2003—is forbidden by the international community “It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium.” (More Iranian nuclear program stories.)