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Written Evidence Submitted by Mr Davis Lewin at Friends of Israel Initiative (UKI0023)

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Written Evidence Submitted by Mr Davis Lewin at Friends of Israel Initiative (UKI0023) Written evidence submitted by Mr Davis Lewin at Friends of Israel Initiative (UKI0023) THE UK AND IRAN 1. The Friends of Israel Initiative (FOII) is a global organisation devoted to fighting the delegitimization of the State of Israel and to support its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders. It is headed by its current Chairman The Hon Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister of Canada. FOII believes that Israel is an integral and vital part of the West, a dynamic, vibrant and prosperous democracy. As such Israel deserves to be fully accepted as a normal Western nation, treated with fairness as any other democracy in the world. FOII was founded in 2010 as a group of global leaders, former Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers, and eminent personalities from diverse fields. In order to further its message, FOII members engage their peers in direct and frank dialogues, invite relevant people to field trips to Israel, call on expert groups to prepare reports and policy papers, disseminate analysis affecting the future of Israel, and publish opinion editorials in pertinent media outlets, among other activities. The Friends of Israel Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 2. FOII considers it imperative that the United Kingdom: - Reorients its approach to a posture of coercive diplomacy and deterrence vis-a-vis Iran’s government, so as to reflect the reality of the Islamic Regime’s outlook, actions and the threat it presents to the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Southwest Asia regions and the stability of the international community. - Recognises that Iran has developed a system of warfare by terrorist proxy that has seen it become a dominant military power in the Middle East, exporting death and suffering to populations that, like Iran’s own population, seek to be free from the Islamic Regime’s domination. - Recognises that Iran has been and continues to be determined to become a nuclear military power, and the untenably grave consequences that success in this endeavour for the Islamic Regime would herald for peace and security for all peoples. 3. At the core of the urgent need to reorient UK policy towards Iran remains the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Regime. As such, given the limited space the Committee has made available in this submission, FOII will focus on the implications of the recently uncovered Nuclear Archives - FOII has been granted unprecedented access to the material contained therein and considers the resultant information of utmost importance for the Committee to consider. 4. The Iran Nuclear Archives and their implications More than a year has already elapsed since Israel managed to bring the Iranian nuclear archive from a warehouse in Tehran to Tel Aviv, evidencing to the world that Iran lied regarding the military dimensions of its nuclear program and misled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 5. FOII had extensive access into the archives, led by top political leaders and nuclear experts, and in examining the contents is convinced that in fact the material in the archives and the mere decision of Iran to keep them in the way they were held proves that there is a need to adopt a different international attitude to Iran's nuclear program. 6. The main findings from the archives are: 1. The Iranian leadership ordered the Iranian scientists to produce 5 nuclear bombs by 2003 to be mounted on missiles. The leadership allocated the necessary resources including an unlimited budget for the implementation of this program. 2. Following this order Iran developed a comprehensive military nuclear program that encompassed all the relevant components. Within a relatively short period of time, under project AMAD, the Iranian scientists made considerable progress in researching and developing the weaponisation of enriched Uranium. During this period they built the infrastructure for all the necessary stages of research and development (R&D), including an underground testing facility and a chamber for testing an internal neutron initiator, a device that is used exclusively for the purposes of initiating an atomic bomb. Moreover they also built facilities needed to produce the weapons once the development of the three necessary components is complete – fissile material produced through either enriching uranium or processing plutonium, ballistic missiles capable of carrying a fitted nuclear warhead (the chosen missile was the Shahab 3 that was already tested at the time (2001); and the weaponization capabilities (design, detonator etc.).1 3. Iran developed a design for a nuclear weapon that was supposed to be used for the production of its initial 5 bombs. In order to develop this design, Iran reviewed several possible designs for a nuclear device which it obtained from outside sources. 4. Iran consulted a number of foreign scientists to better cope with the challenges that such a programme entails. These scientists came from countries that had produced nuclear weapons and were not cooperating with Iran on an official basis. The Iranians made extensive efforts to conceal this cooperation. 5. Iran was working with Uranium that was not declared to the IAEA in sites that were not declared to the IAEA. The facility in Tuquzabad that was used to store uranium is one example out of many - the facility at Abadeh is another. 6. In 2003 the AMAD program was suspended but the work did not entirely stop. AMAD was replaced by another organization that retained the same personnel and was later replaced several times by other organizations that still kept the same scientists that had previously worked in the AMAD project. The director of the current formation, known as SPND, is the same person who led the AMAD program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. When AMAD was suspended, the new organization was expected to go on with researching the gaps that were still of concern to the nuclear 1For more technical details of the findings of the archives see the Harvard Belfer Center report (https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/iran-nuclear-archive-impressions-and-implications) and the series of reports issued by David Albright and Olli Heinonen at the Institute for Science and International Studies (ISIS) and at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). program. As such, despite the changes in name, the apparatus working towards a nuclear weapon in Iran is intact, and has been since the inception of the effort. 7. The nuclear archive Israel’s intelligence service obtained was ordered to be assembled by the authorities in Iran in the way it was found in light of the prospect of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015, known as the Iran nuclear deal. Before that agreement, the material was scattered in various places in Iran’s institutional and nuclear infrastructure. The collection and concealment of the archives and the huge investment the Islamic Regime made in this effort indicate that there was an intention to both hide it from the inspectors and to use it in the future. The facility in which the archive was kept consisted of many movable containers, each holding many safes that were very orderly kept in a way that would enable moving the entire archive from one location to another at short notice. 8. The material in the archives was arranged in an orderly fashion. Of crucial interest are the red files, a set of duplicate materials dedicated to furnishing detail in exchanges with the IAEA and set up to mislead the IAEA. These red files hold all the relevant documents that were altered for the eyes of the agency. The fact that such close records exist in the facility should be understood as a further sign of Iranian professionalism when it comes to deception, since it was necessary to avoid discrepancies, proving how the Iranians correctly assumed that the IAEA inspectors were not going to insist on pressing further to establish the truth of the programme with any level of credibility. Western policymakers were only too happy to entertain the charade. 7. What are the implications of these findings? 1. The archive tells the truth about the Iranian nuclear project. Contrary to what the IAEA report of December 2015 (that enabled the coming of the JCPOA into force a month later) claimed, Iran had a robust military nuclear project and contrary to its commitments in the JCPOA, the Islamic Regime took the necessary steps to resume work on its nuclear weapons at a time of its choosing. 2. Iran lied all throughout the process and was successful in misleading the IAEA and the international community. It claimed that it did not have the intention to produce nuclear weapons and that it never breached its international commitments, which is a total inversion of the truth. 3. The international community and the IAEA never believed this fabrication, but were ready to believe that the Iranian military nuclear project was only at a ‘feasibility study’ stage. Here is the language of the 2015 IAEA report summary: The Agency assesses that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assesses that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities. The Agency has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009. The Agency has found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. The Iran nuclear archives obtained since make a mockery of this statement. 4.
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