Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told NBC yesterday that Tehran has “never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb” and declared that that he has been given “complete authority” by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to negotiate a nuclear deal with the West.
Some analysts expressed skepticism regarding these claims. The Washington Post‘s Max Fisher, who described a large swath of the interview as “great,” noted that Rouhani’s claims about Iran’s nuclear aspirations “strains credulity a bit”:
Western intelligence agencies tend to believe that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon. But there are lots of signs that it is at least trying to give itself that option — vast, clandestine nuclear-enrichment operations buried deep underground don’t inspire the deepest confidences. Neither do recent reports, even since Rouhani’s inauguration, that Iran is upgrading its enrichment facilities. So for Rouhani to state that Iran would full-stop never-ever develop a nuclear weapon is tough to square with the many indications that the country probably wants break-out nuclear capability.
The recent August 2013 report on Iran from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog documented sustained progress that Iran is making toward both uranium- and plutonium-based bombs, and emphasized that the regime is quite literally paving over evidence that it had conducted work relevant to weaponization.
Evaluating the report, the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) estimated that [PDF] Iran is on track to achieve “critical capacity” – the ability to dash across the nuclear finish line before Western powers can detect and intervene – by mid-2014.
As for the latter claim about Khamenei’s buy-in, Reuters expressed skepticism:
Questions remain about how much bargaining room Khamenei, a staunch promoter of Iran’s nuclear program, will give his negotiators, whether in secret talks with Washington or in multilateral discussions with major powers.
Khamenei had, during the election, explicitly forbidden the eventual winner from making concessions to the West, though in recent days had spoken about “flexibility.”
[Photo: nbcnews.com]