Iran's growing industrial and medical capabilities could enable the country to produce chemical or biological weapons if it chose to do so, security expert Anthony Cordesman said in two draft reports released this month (see
GSN, Feb. 26).
"Iran's technology base is advanced enough ... so that Iran retains some capability to make chemical weapons, and it may have inactive or mothballed facilities. While there have been no public reports of active production, this is possible and such efforts can occur at low levels and be easy to conceal," Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a draft
report on Iran's potential chemical-weapon capabilities.
Iran was subjected to chemical weapons strikes during its war with Iraq in the 1980s and rejects claims that it today possesses such a capability itself.
U.S. intelligence officials and other sources continue to assert the existence of an active Iranian chemical weapons program, but "Iran's current status as a chemical weapons power is simply impossible to determine," the report states.
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