Iran’s nukesIranian nuclear archives show advances about which “international inspectors were unaware”

Information contained in the Iranian nuclear archives extracted by Israel in a daring January raid contain more detailed information about the extent of Iran’s nuclear weapons program including specifics “about which international inspectors were unaware,” the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

The Journal report was based on a briefing given by Israeli security officials to selected reporters. The briefing contained more details than what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in April, when he announced the raid and documentation that Israel had recovered.

The topics covered in the briefing included, “how the documents were removed from Iran; the existence within the documents of the warhead designs, for which Israel said Iran got unspecified foreign assistance; the operation of a secret explosives-testing facility that international inspectors had long searched for in vain; and a scramble by Iranian officials to keep their nuclear program alive after international inspectors concluded it had been suspended.”

While some of the information contained in the archive was already known by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with assessing Iran’s compliance with the deal, it also included details “about which international inspectors were unaware.”

The Journal account observes that the Iranian nuclear archives spirited out of Iran, according to Israeli officials, “show that Iran’s weapons-related activities advanced further than previously realized.” The documents also “substantiate previous suspicions that Iran shifted some of those activities into new, disguised channels so they could continue well after 2003,” when Iran was previously thought to have shut down its nuclear weapons program.

The documents show that while Iran shut down the AMAD program, the code word for its nuclear weapons program, in 2003 it shifted “many of its activities into the newly formed Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research.”

Other documents reveal an exchange between two leading Iranian nuclear scientists between “overt” nuclear research, that didn’t need to be hidden because it was civilian in nature, and “covert” research, which needed to be kept secret because it was unique to nuclear-weapons development.

The Iranian archive also showed pictures of what of a firing chamber, necessary for testing explosives that could trigger a nuclear explosion, which was said to be