After the U.S. intelligence community concluded in November 2007 estimate that Iran had halted a "nuclear weapons program," a U.S. intelligence official said key pieces of evidence were intercepted communications from at least one senior military officer and others expressing dismay in 2007 that nuclear weapons-related work had been shut down in 2003. But U.S. intelligence officials said nothing about what kind of work was being shut down, and revealed no further evidence that it was a "nuclear weapons program" under the control of the government.
Nicoullaud's recollections suggest that the 2007 estimate glossed over a crucial distinction between an Iranian "nuclear weapons program" and research projects that had not been authorized or coordinated by the Iranian regime. Nicoullaud told IPS he believes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which controls Iran's ballistic missile program, was also carrying out a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
The IRGC's own ministry had been merged, however, with the old Ministry of Defense to form a new ministry in 1989, which implies that any such clandestine program would have necessarily involved a wider military conspiracy.
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