Iran's 'Clandestine Pathway' to a Nuclear Bomb
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CBN News
WASHINGTON -- Iran denies it is hiding evidence of
nuclear weapons activity even after satellite photos show work being
done at its Parchin military complex, a site often suspected of building
a nuclear warhead.
Iran claims the work is related to road
construction, while others, including the Institute for Science and
International Security, suggest it's a cleanup operation before
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrive.
As lawmakers on Capitol Hill debate the Iranian deal, they must decide if Iran can be trusted.
Another question: Can U.S. intelligence services
find out how close Iran is to building a nuclear bomb. If history is any
judge, their record since World War II is not promising.
"Beginning all the way back in the 1940s with the
Soviet Union at that time, the Communist Chinese, later on the
Pakistanis, the Indians, the South Africans all developed programs …
without the Western services, any of them apparently, including the IAEA
once it had come into existence, knowing about them," Clare Lopez, with
the Center for Security Policy, told CBN News.
Lopez believes Iran practices a dual nuclear strategy: one hidden and one for the world to see.
"The entire program has always had a clandestine
pathway to the bomb to it. I don't think we're anywhere near 10 to 15
years," she explained. "But the real program moved underground and
remains to this day, in large part I think, a covert or clandestine
nuclear weapons program and the proof of that is that every so often
another site will be revealed."
Lopez agrees with Israel that the current nuclear deal fails to address Iran's secrets.
"I think that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu is
exactly right to say this deal, if it goes through, legitimizes the
overt pathway to a bomb for Iran," she said. "But it doesn't even
address the covert pathway to a bomb which continues unaffected by
sanctions or anything else."
Given past failures of Western intelligence to
uncover hidden nuclear programs around the world, U.S. lawmakers will
have to determine they won't be fooled again.