Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, [writing in Axios](https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-nuclear-equiptment-destryoed-israel) yesterday, cited his usual unnamed Israeli sources claiming that Israel’s Oct. 25 strikes on Iran, which among other places, targeted Iran’s Parchin military complex, destroyed “sophisticated equipment” that “is needed to design and test plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it.” U.S. and Israeli officials claimed that Iran has resumed sensitive nuclear research over the past year but has not taken steps toward building an actual nuclear weapon, Ravid went on to report. He did not cite the American officials confirming the Israeli claim of destroying the alleged “sophisticated equipment.”
The official U.S. intelligence assessment is still that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The Iranians, for their part, still deny they ever had a nuclear weapons program and repeated that denial during the visit to Tehran of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. “As we have repeatedly said, we have never been and will never be seeking nuclear weapons, based on a fatwa by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution,” Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian said yesterday while meeting with Grossi, [reported Tasnim.
The President further said that what Iran is seeking in nuclear technology is in accordance with the IAEA’s legal framework and permission as well as the rights considered by the agency for the other countries, his official website reported. Based on that, he added, Iran is ready to cooperate with the IAEA to resolve ambiguities over its peaceful nuclear program.
