WANA (May 30) – Fereydoon Abbasi, former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, has recently stated that Iran has possessed the technical capability to build a nuclear weapon for the past two decades.

 

Emphasizing the importance of preserving the country’s nuclear capabilities, he said: “Having plutonium and enriched uranium is essential for Iran… We also have explosive technology, and we could have built a bomb 20 years ago.”

 

Abbasi also addressed Iran’s membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), saying: “We are a member of the NPT and have been under the IAEA’s supervision, but we must decide how long we want to remain in this treaty.”

 

Quoting Western sources, he noted that technological advances have made it possible to produce limited-scale explosions with smaller amounts of nuclear material, adding that such explosions are not significantly different from traditional 10- or 20-ton bombs.

President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, attended the National Nuclear Technology Day event at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on April 09, 2025. President. ir/ WANA News Agency

He went on to say, “If the country decides to move toward weaponization, it can no longer be said that these weapons are necessarily weapons of mass destruction; even Western sources acknowledge that modern technologies allow for targeted explosions.”

 

In another part of his remarks, he referred to the situation in Gaza: “Over 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza over a certain period. If that doesn’t qualify as mass killing, then what does?”

 

These comments come amid ongoing international scrutiny of Iran’s nuclear program and uranium enrichment levels, which remain central to diplomatic discussions.