Former Iranian President Rafsanjani Admits Iran Has Always Sought To Build Nuclear Weapon
The interview with Rafsanjani was conducted in Farsi and was translated and distributed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a dissident group in Iran.
Yochanan Visser
During an interview with the Iran Republic News Agency (IRNA), former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani admitted that Iran has sought to obtain nuclear weapons ever since it launched its covert nuclear program.
The interview with Rafsanjani was conducted in Farsi and was translated and distributed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a dissident group in Iran.
The former Iranian president told IRNA that the decision to build a nuclear bomb was related to the war with Iraq in the 1980s and Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear program.
“At the time that we started, we were at war, and we were looking to have this capability (a nuclear weapon) for the day that our enemy would want to resort to the nuclear bomb,” Rafsanjani reportedly told IRNA.
“Those years, we were all thinking that we should arm ourselves with deterrent elements since the war was not about to end and in our defensive policies we had the word of Imam (Ayatollah Khomeini) in mind that the war may last 20 years.
“Our basic doctrine was peaceful usage of the nuclear technology although we never abandoned the idea that if one day we are threatened and it is imperative, we would have the capability for going the other path (to a nuclear weapon) as well,” Rafsanjani added.
Rafsanjani also told IRNA that both he and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continued the project to acquire a nuclear bomb. The former Iranian president admitted that the Iranian nuclear program had covert elements such as secret nuclear facilities, uranium enrichment facilities, the construction of a heavy water reactor and centrifuge development.
Rafsanjani’s admission is consistent with what Israeli intelligence services always have said about Iran’s nuclear program: Khamenei ordered the production of nuclear weapons in 1987.
Israeli Iran expert Ronen Bergman wrote in his book, The Secret War with Iran:
During a secret meeting of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran that year, Khamenei said the following: “Our nation has always been subject to external threats. The little we can do to stand up to this danger is to make our enemies aware that we can defend ourselves. Accordingly, any step that we take here will serve the defense of our nation and your revolution. With this aim in mind, you must work hard and fast.”
