US ignores Iran’s active nuclear weapons activities by using ‘defective’ definition: Expert

An expert on Iran's nuclear development says the U.S. is improperly assessing Iran's pursuit of atomic weapons, supported by Dutch, Swedish and German intelligence reports.

When asked about a series of European intelligence reports from the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany that point to Iran’s regime actively building a nuclear weapons program, David Albright, a physicist who is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital, "It is a matter of how Europeans define a nuclear weapon program vs. USA intelligence community’s definition, combined with a serious post-Iraqi WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction] analytical paralysis. It is amazing that U.S. intelligence community is still digging its heels in and using the defective, overly defensive 2007 NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] framework." Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe for Fox News Digital. Benjamin has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, The Jerusalem Post, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Forbes and The New York Post. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal.

Albright, who worked closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team from 1992 until 1997 focusing on Iraqi documents and past procurement activities, added, "Remember in that NIE a civil declared enrichment program was defined as by nature not part of a nuclear weapons program. So, they’re trapped by this absurd definition. And they ignore that the intelligence community’s definition of a secret nuclear weapons program in 2007 would be indicated by an undeclared uranium enrichment program, which the NIE said Iran was not building. But in fact, Iran was building a secret enrichment plant, unknown to IC in 2007, at Fordow."