In a newly released report, the German intelligence agency in the state of Bavaria concluded that the Islamic Republic of Iran is seeking to transform conventional military weapons into a system for weapons of mass destruction, Benjamin Weinthal reported in The Jerusalem Post Monday.
“Iran, North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are making efforts to expand their conventional weapons arsenal through the production of weapons of mass destruction,” according to an assessment from the Munich-based intelligence agency.
The 312-page long report defined proliferation and weapons of mass destruction activities “as the illegal propagation of atomic, biological and chemical weapons and the production of their applicable products.”
The Bavarian intelligence agency charged that the Islamic Republic was seeking to acquire construction parts and the necessary know-how in Germany and other highly developed technological countries to develop its illicit program for weapons of mass destruction.
Weinthal previously reported for the Post in June that the German intelligence community believes that “Iran continued to undertake, as did Pakistan and Syria, efforts to obtain goods and know-how to be used for the development of weapons of mass destruction and to optimize corresponding missile-delivery systems.”
The BfV, Germany’s federal intelligence agency, warned in 2015 that Iran was still trying to procure illicit technology for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, despite then-ongoing nuclear negotiations with world powers. German intelligence also reported in 2016 that Iran sought to procure nuclear-related materials in at least half of Germany’s states and was involved in attempts to advance the Islamic Republic’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities. Last year, German intelligence reported that Iran made at least 32 attempts to acquire proliferation-related technologies, possibly in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The pattern emerging from four years of German intelligence reports reaffirms concerns of critics of the JCPOA, the nuclear deal signed between Iran and six world powers in 2015, who claim that the deal failed to curb Tehran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapons program.
In May, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the JCPOA, after they failed to reach an agreement with European countries to fix major flaws in the agreement. The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, remains a strong proponent of the Iran nuclear deal.
[Photo: Hossein Velayati / WikiCommons]