Detecting and Halting an Iranian Weaponization Effort

Peloni:  Establishing a ‘credible threat of military force’, as  described in detail in the Section 3 under the Policy Recommendations header in this essay, will not deter the Mullahs who are motivated by a armeggedonist ideology.  Failing to appreciate this reality will only serve to embolden the Mullahs as precious time is spent in the pretense that such radicals as those who designed the October 7 massacre can be either threatened into capitulation or reasoned into rational compliance.  Instead of establishing a credible threat of military force, the West, led by the US, should eliminate the existing threat emanating from Iran, which is organized throughout both Europe and South and Central America.  Coordinating an attack on its nuclear and oil producing infrastructure with regime change operations should be executed in lieu of demonstrations of force as described below.  By thus cutting the head off this nearly nuclear Hydra, the US led effort will stabilize and protect, not just the Middle East, but the entire world, while also freeing the people of Iran and Lebanon which are currently held fast in the fist of the tyrannical Mullahs.

Andrea Stricker | FDD | Feb 19, 2025

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58077

Executive Summary

A secret team of Iranian scientists is working to shorten the country’s route to nuclear weapons, according to current and former U.S. officials. This intelligence was collected during President Joe Biden’s final months in office, then relayed to the incoming national security team under President Donald Trump.¹

Despite the Islamic Republic’s search for a shortcut to the bomb, Trump’s second term as president presents a historic chance to reverse the Biden administration’s failed Iran policies and prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. Indeed, Trump has repeatedly declared since taking office that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.² To make that goal a reality, he should immediately muster the full weight of the U.S. national security establishment to confront this urgent threat. In particular, now that Iran has a team working to speed its path to the bomb and has produced enough highly enriched uranium for multiple nuclear weapons, the new administration must focus on detecting and stopping additional secret moves by Tehran to advance its weaponization program — i.e., the key scientific and engineering work that could enable the production of a functioning nuclear device, integrating a uranium fissile core, a triggering mechanism, and explosives.³

During his four years as president, Biden allowed Tehran’s nuclear program to progress largely unimpeded. Today, Iran likely has the capability and know-how to produce nuclear weapons but lacks confidence in the functionality of certain components and therefore the device as a whole. However, according to nuclear expert David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, Iran probably knows how to resolve these issues and, in a rush, may be able to detonate a crude nuclear device within six months of starting.⁴

An advancing Iranian weaponization capability, matched with Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to near-weapons grade, limits the window of time in which the United States and its allies could intervene to stop an Iranian dash to nuclear weapons, known as a breakout. The regime may be able to move existing enriched uranium stockpiles to secret, highly fortified underground facilities, further enrich that fuel to weapons grade, and finalize construction of nuclear devices before the West could take effective action.⁵ Thus, if the United States and its allies fail to stop Tehran’s weaponization efforts before a breakout begins, they could be relatively surprised when Iran successfully constructs atomic devices and conducts a demonstration test.

The Trump administration has already broken with Biden’s ineffective policy with its February 2025 presidential memorandum reimposing the “maximum pressure” policy and sanctions against Iran that were in place during Trump’s first term. There is ample justification for this pressure, yet it may also provide the clerical regime with an additional incentive to seek nuclear weapons to secure its hold on power.⁶ It could also sprint for the bomb to bolster its offensive and defensive capabilities to deter further Israeli strikes against the regime itself following Israel’s damaging military operations against Iran’s most potent proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and Tehran’s loss of its military assets in Syria.

To deter a breakout, Washington and Jerusalem must review and, where necessary, enhance joint intelligence operations and capabilities to penetrate and sabotage Iran’s weaponization program and uncover weaponization facilities. America should also mobilize the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to conduct in-depth inspections of illicit Iranian sites and activities. Concurrently, the United States and Israel must prepare and showcase effective military options and signal to the regime the credible threat of their use.⁷

Now that its efforts to speed its path to nuclear weapons are becoming public, Tehran may seek to preempt or mitigate any pressure campaign and test U.S. and European resolve by seeking a new nuclear deal that would reimpose temporary and limited constraints on its nuclear activities while allowing it to maintain de facto nuclear weapons capabilities — a strategy the Iranians have used previously. While Trump, too, has indicated his desire to reach a negotiated settlement on the Iran nuclear issue, he and his European partners must resist the temptation to conclude a flawed deal.⁸ Providing sanctions relief to Tehran for such a deal will mean the regime can use its nuclear activities for future extortion or renege on its commitments once Trump leaves office.

This research memorandum begins by tracing the history of Iran’s efforts to weaponize nuclear material for the purpose of building atomic arms. This background forms the basis for the subsequent section, which assesses the current status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its progression over the past few years, indicating the urgency and potential imminence of the threat. The memorandum concludes with detailed policy recommendations that provide a roadmap for the Trump administration to resolve the Iranian nuclear challenge.

First and foremost, the United States and Israel should review and, where necessary, enhance joint intelligence efforts to detect and disrupt Iranian weaponization activities. Second, the United States and its European allies should mobilize the IAEA for in-depth inspections aimed at detecting Iranian weaponization activities. Third, the United States or Israel should demonstrate its ability to militarily eliminate any detected Iranian weaponization facilities and activities. Finally, Trump should resist nuclear negotiations that allow Iran to delay consequences or a deal that permits Tehran to evade meaningful nuclear constraints.

Iran’s Weaponization Program: History and Background

For more than two decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has amassed the technical know-how and experience needed to build nuclear weapons in short order.⁹ From the outset, Tehran sought the production of a nuclear weapon rather than merely civilian applications for nuclear power.

Early Years and Iran’s Nuclear Archive

In 2002, nongovernmental groups and the media publicly revealed that Tehran was constructing secret nuclear facilities and conducting undeclared nuclear activities related to uranium and plutonium production, the key fissile materials needed to detonate nuclear weapons. As a state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran had a binding legal obligation to declare such facilities and activities to the IAEA and place them under safeguards.

Following the discovery of its illicit activities, Iran denied that it had any intention of weaponizing its nuclear material, but the IAEA and Western governments began to uncover substantial evidence suggesting otherwise.¹⁰ In addition to nuclear fuel production, the IAEA learned of Iran’s work on various steps in the weaponization process as well as efforts related to mounting a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. Iran cooperated only sporadically with IAEA investigations into the nature of its nuclear activities.

Israel’s 2018 seizure of an archive of the regime’s nuclear weapons files shed new light on Tehran’s late 1990s to 2003 nuclear weapons program, known as the Amad Plan. The archive’s materials filled in extensive missing information about Iran’s early nuclear weapons activities and capabilities, allowing for projections of their status today. The archive’s files contained, among other information, Iran’s detailed electronic and hard copy nuclear weapon plans and timelines; engineering progress documents; memorandums of meetings; photographs of nuclear weapons personnel, sites, and equipment; locations and functions of nuclear facilities; and a nuclear weapon design.¹¹

According to the nuclear archive’s documents, prior to mid-2003, Iran had made substantial progress on manufacturing subcomponents and testing nuclear weapons equipment but likely required additional work and testing to refine several steps.¹² Iran also had numerous pilot-scale and large-scale weaponization-related facilities under construction.¹³ The archive indicated that Iran planned to build an initial five nuclear weapons by 2003 and test them while simultaneously building production-scale facilities to develop a larger nuclear arsenal.¹⁴

However, Iran’s plans were running behind schedule. By mid-2003, Tehran still lacked weapons-grade uranium, confronted bottlenecks in its weaponization work, and faced growing international scrutiny of its nuclear activities. At that time, with U.S. forces present in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran — fearing that Iran would be Washington’s next military target — decided to downsize and disperse Amad Plan activities to military sites and civilian institutions, temporarily shelving the goal of constructing atomic weapons.¹⁵ Around the same time, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly issued an Islamic edict known as a Fatwa that banned nuclear weapons development. However, fatwas can be reversed, and the nuclear fatwa’s issuance may have been a means to divert Western focus from the nuclear program.¹⁶

According to archive meeting memorandums, despite shelving the Amad Plan, Iranian officials still planned to maintain limited nuclear activities, moving those with potential radiological signatures to secure military sites and those with plausible civilian justifications to research institutes. Western governments and the IAEA continued to monitor Iran for evidence of a nuclear weapons program, at times disagreeing in their characterizations of the nature of Tehran’s activities and their level of coordination and organization. In particular, certain U.S. agencies, European countries, Israel, and the IAEA remained skeptical that Iran’s weaponization activities had fully ended.¹⁷

Figure 1. Iran’s nuclear weapon design schematic, found in the nuclear archive. Translated from Farsi by the Institute for Science and International Security in Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons, 2021.

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