Since Iran’s nuclear program was exposed in August 2002, Tehran has protested its innocence and claimed its nuclear program has only civilian purposes. The IAEA has just produced its latest report and it is not expressing confidence in Iran’s version of the facts. The IAEA pressing Iran on a number of findings about clandestine military activities–a diagram for an underground testing arrangement, the testing of explosive bridgewire detonators normally used for nuclear weapons, and documents about modifying the Iranian Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear warhead. And the report includes the following statement:

The Agency has also inquired about the reasons for inclusion in the curriculum vitae of an IAP [Institute of Applied Physics, a military-linked institute implicated in some of Iran’s nuclear activities] of a Taylor-Sedov equation for the evolving radius of a nuclear explosion ball with photos of the 1945 Trinity test–the July 16, 1945 US test of a nuclear plutonium bomb in the New Mexico desert.

Iran has denied that there is any connection to nuclear weapons, just as it denied that it had asked for a nuclear warhead design it obtained from the network of Pakistani scientist Dr. A.Q. Khan. But these denials are starting to ring more and more hollowly, even to the ears of IAEA Director General, Dr. Mohammad ElBaradei, not exactly unsympathetic to Iranian arguments. The IAEA has now verified that the design Iran has is identical to the one Pakistan has–so we now know that Iran obtained a design for a nuclear weapon from the Khan network, built an underground testing range, developed special detonators for a nuclear weapon, modified its long range missiles to fit a nuclear warhead, and has set physicists to studying nuclear blasts. What more does the international community need to know about this program before it recognizes that stronger measures are needed to prevent Iran from achieving its goals?