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9 September 2024

How Close Is Iran to the Bomb?

Jay Solomon

If Iran ever builds a nuclear bomb, then we’ll be living in a drastically more dangerous world. For more than two decades, avoiding that reality has motivated American foreign policy, with decidedly mixed results. Now, recent activities at a secretive office inside Tehran’s Ministry of Defense is stoking fears that we’re far closer to that day than many experts understand.

Two separate documents—about a half dozen pages written in Farsi—obtained by The Free Press reveal how Iran’s parliament, or Majlis, is significantly expanding the funding and military pursuits of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known by its Farsi language–based acronym, SPND. The pages of legislation, passed this summer, were downloaded from the parliament’s website, but are being detailed for the first time in the Western press.

While the new Iranian legislation doesn’t specifically mention nuclear bomb development, it clearly states that SPND’s mandate is to produce advanced and nonconventional weapons with no civilian oversight. The legislation, which The Free Press translated, states that “this organization focuses on managing and acquiring innovative, emerging, groundbreaking, high-risk, and superior technologies in response to new and emerging threats.”

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