Does Iran actually have the nuclear material that America claims?

Severe criticism has emerged worldwide regarding US President Trump, who has created an unnecessary war for the world. A major factor in these criticisms is that this war is aimed at preventing Iran from emerging as a nuclear power, or it is based on a CIA 'conjecture' that Iran is secretly hiding nuclear materials.

To date, Iran is a country that has never conducted a nuclear test. Critics believe that American presidents have propagated this 'unsubstantiated lie' for a long time. Over the past three decades, under five different American administrations, a political narrative was constructed claiming that Iran was secretly moving towards the ultimate goal of producing nuclear weapons. This false narrative created a fiction about Iranian policies and completely obscured the aggressive role played by America in forcing Iran to abandon its sovereign right to a peaceful nuclear program.

The most critical aspect of this false narrative was portraying Iran's decision in the mid-1980s to acquire uranium enrichment technology from the international black market as an ambition to obtain nuclear weapons. In reality, Iran wanted to revive the nuclear program initiated during the Shah's era and to secure fuel for its only nuclear reactor, Bushehr, through a French company. However, in 1984, the Reagan administration pressured European allies to cease all nuclear cooperation with Iran, and as a result, France canceled its agreements.

America acted in violation of every member state's right to acquire technology for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Faced with these intense pressures, Iran, without betraying its national pride, decided to seek the relevant technology through the black market, which should not have surprised American policymakers. However, Western media created sensational news claiming that Iran had been secretly enriching uranium for 18 years, establishing a strong public opinion that they were preparing to produce nuclear weapons. But the reality was that until 1999, Iran had not even tested a single centrifuge using uranium.

The most important evidence of Iran's policy towards nuclear weapons is the true story of their non-use of chemical weapons against Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Even though Iraq launched severe poison gas attacks, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, completely prohibiting the production and use of chemical and weapons of mass destruction according to Islamic law. Even when Mohsen Rafighdoost, then Minister of Military Supplies, requested permission to produce nuclear and chemical weapons, Khomeini firmly rejected it, emphasizing that they were contrary to Islam (haram).

After Khomeini's death, his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also issued his own fatwa against the possession of nuclear weapons in the mid-1990s. Although some Iranian military officials suggested adopting a policy of maintaining nuclear capability like Japan, in 2003, Khamenei publicly stated that he was not interested in atomic bombs and chemical weapons, and that they were contrary to his policies. At the same time, he compelled all those researching nuclear weapons to acknowledge that such activities were forbidden under Islamic law.

Despite this true situation, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) continuously made incorrect assessments of Iran's nuclear program. Technical experts at a new center established by the CIA in 1991 operated without understanding Iran's political background and interpreted telex messages sent by Iran to purchase dual-use technologies as evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Specifically, in 2001, an intelligence report was prepared, concluding that Iran was preparing to produce nuclear weapons, based on Vice President Dick Cheney's political interests, and reliable evidence confirming that Iran had no such intention was deliberately suppressed. Subsequently, investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2007 and 2008 proved that the technical equipment acquired by Iran was used solely for academic purposes at Sharif University.