Iran is already a nuclear weapons state with enough uranium to build “one, if not two” bombs, warned an ex-US diplomat and nuclear weapons expert.
Former Washington official Robert Joseph told MailOnline: “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented that Iran has 60% enriched uranium, enough for at least one, if not two bombs.
“We’ve been saying for years ‘they are approaching this breakthrough point and we really need to negotiate with them’. They’re there.’
The former United States Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security spoke ahead of the ‘Free Iran’ summit in Albania, which was abruptly canceled due to a terror threat.
Joseph is pictured at a State Department press conference about Iran during the Bush presidency
The US State Department issued a security warning ahead of the summit this weekend and urged officials, including Joseph, not to attend.
Fellow Washington officials, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Senator Joe Lieberman and former NATO General James Jones, attended.
“I am the last person to propose the use of force, there or with North Korea,” Joseph said in Tirana. “But rather to support the opposition in overthrowing this regime.”
Joseph was Libya’s chief negotiator in 2003 and is credited with convincing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program.
He has strongly criticized the regime of former President Barack Obama and his actions in aiding the overthrow of Gaddafi’s government in 2011, as well as the 2015 nuclear deal the government agreed to prevent Iran from using weapons of mass destruction. develop.
Iran’s military fired ballistic missiles into the Great Salt Desert last January
There is growing fear that Iran has the capacity to build its own atomic bombs (image 2010)
The conference was hosted by an exiled Iranian opposition group living in exile in the Ashraf 3 camp in Tirana, with some former US officials supporting the campaigners as a possible replacement for the Islamic Republic that currently controls Iran.
“The US government is aware of a potential threat directed at the Free Iran World Summit to be held July 23-24, 2022 near Durres, Albania,” the US embassy in Albania said a day before the event, and asked American citizens for the summit and “be aware of your surroundings.”
The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said in May that Iran’s “breakthrough time” — the time the regime theoretically needs to produce a nuclear weapon — had dwindled to two weeks.
But the Institute for Science and International Security said the outbreak time was zero a month later.
“We hear that they are regularly testing ballistic missiles and that they are trying to get enough uranium to produce a weapon,” said MP Matthew Offord, who was to attend the event.
“The problem with the ballistic missiles is that they would have a longer range,” he added. “It wouldn’t be in the immediate area, say to Israel, it could go much further than that.”
The MP said he took “preventive measures” after the death of his friend David Amess last year, a fellow MP who was murdered by an Islamist extremist.
Iranian agents have previously targeted events hosted by members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the exiled opposition that moved to Tirana after thousands of its members were executed during the 2013-2017 war in Iraq.
John Baird, Canada’s former secretary of state who was also in attendance, said the terror threat was only the second time in his career that a summit had been canceled due to a credible threat to those in attendance, the first time the NCRI had also been involved.
In 2018, French police arrested an Iranian agent who attempted to bring explosives and a detonator to an NCRI meeting in Paris.
Assadollah Assadi, 49, who worked at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the court in Antwerp, Belgium, the first time an Iranian official in the EU has faced such charges since the 1979 revolution.
But on Thursday, the Belgian parliament ratified a treaty to swap the convicted terrorist with a Belgian citizen held hostage in Iran, a move vehemently opposed by the Iranian opposition.
“We must stand with Iran in this great battle. The people of Iran have learned that the world recognizes this regime for what it is,” Baird added. “I’m a big proponent of regime change, not outside of military force, but the National Council is probably the biggest and most effective opposition to the regime, so we have to support them.”
The IAEA said in May that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent had grown to 95 pounds, an increase of more than 300% from the previous three months.
NCRI originally unveiled the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program to the world in 2005, providing evidence to international agencies that the regime has been working to produce a neutron initiator by using Polonium 210 and Beryllium – giving it the capacity to enrich uranium and eventually acquire nuclear weapons.