By Ernest Francis

The focus in public discussions in the coming days (after the Israeli air strikes) is likely to be on Iran’s enrichment activities for uranium that could be used to create a nuclear weapon. Iran’s effort to develop a nuclear weapon began in the 1990s with the AMAD program, which Iran claims it ended in 2003. While Iran now asserts that nuclear materials that it acquires are strictly for civilian energy, according to the National Council for Resistance in Iran (“NCRI”), the efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon in fact resumed in 2009. Those efforts include what has been done under the “Kavir” (meaning desert in Farsi) plan, which focuses more on actual weapons assembly than on enrichment. The NCRI outlined the details of that plan at a press conference on June 10 in Washington, DC.
The NCRI has a ten point plan for Iran: (1) rejection of absolute clerical rule; (2) freedom of speech, political parties, assembly, press, and internet; (3) commitment to individual and social freedom; (4) separation of religion and state and freedom of religion; (5) complete gender equality (political, social, and cultural); (6) independent judiciary and legal system, including the abolition of sharia law; (7) autonomy for and rectifying injustices to Iranian minority nationalities; (8) justice and equal opportunity in employment and entrepreneurship for blue collar workers, nurses, teachers, and retirees; (9) protection and rehabilitation of the environment; and (10) elimination of a non-nuclear Iran devoid of weapons of mass destruction. Implementation of these proposals would result in a thoroughly modern Iran but would require a change in the Iranian government in Iran. That in turn would lead to the cessation of Iran’s nuclear military activities since the current Iranian regime seeks to stay in power by acquiring nuclear weapons.
While the regime in Tehran states that its activities related to atomic energy are strictly peaceful, what it has done pursuant to the Kavir plan shows otherwise, since the Kavir plan can have no objective other than the production of weapons. The development of a nuclear weapon has three components: (1) acquisition of fissile material; (2) enrichment of that material; and (3) a delivery capacity. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”) in 2015, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, between Iran and the US, UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany primarily addressed the second step. The Kavir program focuses on the last of these elements.
Iran’s nuclear weapons development efforts are spearheaded by its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (whose initials are SPND in Farsi). In 2014, the SPND was sanctioned by the United States Department of State, pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13382, for acting to proliferate nuclear weapons.
Iran likely has, or could readily acquire whatever enriched uranium it would need for a nuclear weapon. It now has about 400 kg of highly enriched uranium – enough for a dozen nuclear weapons. Enrichment is the process which the U-235 isotope (about 0.7 per cent of uranium in nature) is separated from the much more common U-238 by centrifuge on uranium hexafluoride. The uranium that Iran now holds has been enriched to the 60 per cent level but would need to be enriched to the 90 per cent level to be weapons grade. That is well beyond what is necessary for civilian energy.
a commercial nuclear reactor. Iran now has one nuclear power plant what provides electricity, and the fuel for that plant comes from Russia and is reprocessed in Russia once it is spent. Accordingly, Iran doesn’t need enriched uranium for civilian use. Since the enrichment to 90 per cent of the uranium Iran now has could be done in a month, the critical process at this juncture would be the incorporation of that material into a nuclear weapon.
That would be what the Kavir program would enable Iran to do. The Kavir program is now being conducted in Semnan province, which is 60 per cent desert. Much of the province is now off limits to anyone but military. Nine per cent of the province is a red zone, which civilians cannot enter. Approximately half of the remainder of the province is restricted by environmental protections. The area is under intense surveillance with aircraft, drones, and facial recognition cameras. This indicates that the regime is attempting to hide what it is doing there.
The NCRI summarized the Kavir plan as “the development of boosted nuclear warheads for missiles with a range exceeding 3,000 kilometers.” The Kavir plan is being executed at a series of military and industrial sites in Semnan province. The creation of nuclear warheads for solid and liquid fuelled missiles occurs at the Shahroud site (including the Imam Reza Training Center), Semnan site (part of the Semnan Air Defense Complex), and Me’raj-1 drone production site. Various components for nuclear weapons are being produced at the Ivanaki site (code named Rangi-Kaman – the rainbow facility). The Sanjarian site seeks to create “shock wave generators for simultaneous detonation in a nuclear weapon.” The Sorkheh Hesar site does “underground and geophysical testing of nuclear weapons”, while the Parchin site also does testing for high explosives for nuclear weapons and laser enrichment technology. Defense for the various sites developing weapons is provided by the Ghadir Long-Range Radar site in Northwest Semnan (with anti-aircraft missiles) and the IRGC’s 10th Moharram Air Defense Unit in Shahroud (missile defense), and the military installations at the Hasheminejad Logistics Base – Damghan (storage of weapons and ammunition) and the airfield and training facilities at the Semnan Air Defense Complex enhance defenses.
According to the NCRI, nuclear weapons are the “life insurance policy” for Iran’s cleric regime, which is the weakest it has been since its inception in 1979. Its efforts to project force through conventional military have failed in both Lebanon with Hezbollah and Yemen with the Houthis. Inflation in Iran exceeds 35 per cent. Power outages are frequent. Eighty per cent of civilians in Iran are below the poverty line. The Iranian public sees the massive government expenditures on nuclear weapons and wants those funds redirected toward other more useful objectives.
Iran has done 1300 executions since August, 2024, with some of those being political prisoners. The frequent use of executions is designed to stifle dissent.
While Iran has participated in talks that would lead to an agreement to replace the 2015 JCPOA, from which the United States withdrew in 2011, it had done so only for the purpose of delay. The JCPOA contains a “snapback” mechanism under which one of the members can cause the reimposition of sanctions against Iran through the vote of the United Nations Security Council if Iran violates the agreement. This mechanism expires in October, after which any new sanctions would require the vote of the security council (subject to the veto power of the permanent members) so Iran seeks to extend the negotiations until that time, when it will no longer face the possibility of sanctions under the JCPOA.
members) so Iran seeks to extend the negotiations until that time, when it will no longer face the possibility of sanctions under the JCPOA.
The regime change sought by the NCRI would lead to the cessation of the Iranian nuclear program. In the interim, the NCRI proposes five actions to avoid the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran:
-The immediate reinstatement of all UN Security Council resolutions related to Iran’s nuclear program and reimposition of all sanctions;
-The complete and permanent termination of uranium enrichment in Iran;
-The permanent closure and dismantling of all of Iran’s nuclear sites, with IAEA verification;
-The elimination of Tehran’s missile program; and
-The ability to conduct unannounced inspections at any nuclear site.