Experts Debunk The Iranian Nuclear Weapon Story By Larry C. Johnson.

Experts Debunk The Recent Claims That Iran Acquired A Nuclear Weapon.

Written By: Justin K.P.

As I reported yesterday, a new report based entirely on anonymous sources by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson and journalist Pepe Escobar claims that Iran has acquired a nuclear weapon from a third country and plans to detonate it on Iranian soil as a deterrence warning to the U.S. and Israel.

The report claimed that Iran told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that if it did not end strikes on Iran and the Israeli war on Lebanon, it would move forward with:

-Immediate Withdrawal from the ongoing nuclear peace talks.

-Total Abandonment of the prospective Nuclear Treaty framework.

- The Detonation of a Nuclear Device on Iranian soil—executed not as a weapon of war, but as an undeniable demonstration of sovereign capability and ultimate control over the escalation ladder.

In my article, I noted that the report should be taken with a “grain of salt” but believed it could be possible.

Multiple geopolitics experts and experts on Iran, however, have demonstrated clearly that the story is almost certainly bogus.

The Larry C. Johnson report claims that “Iran’s objective is, with the backing of Pakistan, China and Russia, to raise the risk to Israel of engaging in future attacks on Iran.”

Professor John Mearsheimer said this made him skeptical of the claims in the report .

“ I don’t think Russia or China, the other two great powers in the system, would give Iran a nuclear weapon. There has been no evidence of that along the way. And great powers like the United States, Russia, and China tend to be adamantly opposed to proliferation. They tend to be very hardline on proliferation,” Mearsheimer noted.

“With regard to Iran, it’s very hard for me to imagine Pakistan giving Iran a nuclear weapon … it’s very hard for me to imagine Pakistan even giving a nuclear weapon to Saudi Arabia, but that’s more likely than Iran,” he added, noting “I find this story to be hard to believe”.

Mearsheimer also noted that the geopolitical strategy behind this story does not make sense.

“If they got a nuclear weapon and they had only one nuclear weapon, they would have no incentive to explode that nuclear weapon because then they wouldn’t have another nuclear weapon,” he noted, adding, “for this story to make sense, they need at least two nuclear weapons”.

But as he noted, if Iran acquired more than one Nuclear Weapon and attempted to test one, “ if they have only one remaining nuke after they test this one nuke or explode this one nuke and the Israelis have any idea of where where it, I would believe the Israelis would use a nuclear weapon to take it out. So that would be an extremely dangerous situation.”

The German-Syrian journalist Kevork Almassian spoke to the Russian analyst Andrei Alexandru and Iranian analyst Ehsan Safarnejad, both who gave an even more thorough debunking of the Johnson story.

“Iran has everything that it needs to create a nuclear weapon on its own ground if it decides to do so. They even have those ballistic missiles that are part of their space program which theoretically could be prepared for use in a more advanced scenario… they have uranium, they have the technology (it) is just a matter of internal decision”, Andrei Alexandru noted, questioning the claim that Iran acquired one or more Nuclear weapons from a separate country.

Andrei Alexandru also strongly questioned the veracity of a third country such as Pakistan or North Korea quickly sending a nuclear weapon to Iran under the noses of the U.S. and Israel.

He noted:

I don’t think that Israel and the Americans wouldn’t have known about it if- for example- North Korea would have decided to ship some nukes and- also for anyone who has a little bit of military knowledge knows that this cannot happen because okay they are going to send what a warhead or the full device with the missile if you want to incorporate this missile into the Iranian weapons systems It takes time. I mean, it’s not so simple. You are not sending an AK-47 >> or a bomb from the American cartoons with Bunny.

A nuclear device is still a very complex device. And if you want to use it, for example, in a defensive way against the Americans, still you need a very capable missile which is going to reach Los Angeles, I don’t know, Washington and so on. And you need systems to be able to launch that type of missile. It’s not that any country can send it. For example, Pakistan is going to call Arachi and say, look, in your luggage you have a gift from us. It’s not so simple.

Ehsan Safarnejad similarly questioned the idea of Iran obtaining a Nuclear weapon from a different country, noting that Iran could build one if it chose to do so.

“There are a few things that you need in order to make nuclear weapons. You need, for example, electric bridge wires. You need these studies about converging symmetrical explosions to create the bur sphere. You need to produce this thing called uranium metal that is used in the fuse of the method. You need neutron generators,” adding that “everything you need, Iran has”, adding, “Iran has even set the ground in order for the re-entry vehicle to be equipped with the bur sphere”.

“Iran doesn’t need anyone else to give it a a nuclear weapon,” he noted.

He was similarly deeply skeptical around the idea of Russia and China supporting an Iranian nuclear bomb.

An “Iranian international relations professor,” he noted, “had a conversation with the Russian president’s aide and he asked him ‘considering everything that has happened do you support us going nuclear,’ and he said ‘Oh, don’t get us wrong. Don’t get ahead of yourself. We do support some of your positions, but our opposition to you becoming a nuclear state is greater than that of the United States.’”

I am not writing this article as an attack on Larry C. Johnson or Pepe Escobar, and I don’t doubt that they are just reporting what their sources told them.

But it is clear that the story given to them does not add up, and given how prevalent it has become in alternative media currently, it is important to show the many holes in it.

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