Agence France-Presse,
Washington: The stunning US turnabout on Iran's nuclear weapons program hinged on notes obtained by US intelligence that detailed deliberations by Iranian military officials, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Citing senior US intelligence and government officials, the Times said the notes included conversations by senior Iranian military officials complaining bitterly about a decision in late 2003 to halt a complex engineering effort to design a nuclear weapon that could fit atop a missile, the Times said.
The notes were corroborated in recent months by other intelligence, including intercepted conversations of Iranian officials, it said.
The Times said it was not clear if the intercepted conversations were of the same military officials or others whose deliberations were recounted in the notes, or their superiors.
The newly obtained intelligence ultimately led the US intelligence community to conclude with “high confidence” that Iran halted the secret weapons program in 2003, in a reversal of historic proportions.
Two of 16 intelligence entitites, however, had only “moderate” confidence that the halt to those activities represented a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program.
Hard evidence of the covert Iranian weapons program came to light in 2004 when US intelligence obtained a laptop that belonged to an Iranian engineer.
