Iran's former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani reportedly admitted that Iran began its nuclear program with the intention of pursuing nuclear weapons capability.
There was a nuclear scientist called Abdul Qadeer Khan in Pakistan... In a trip to Pakistan, I asked to see him.
"We implemented part of our nuclear activity when we were still at war and Iraq was close to securing enrichment when Israel destroyed all of it," he said, referring to Israel's daring raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility which destroyed Saddam Hussein's nascent program.
"Those years, we were all thinking that we should arm ourselves with deterrent elements since the war was not about to end and in our defensive policies we had the word of Imam [Khomeini] in mind that the war may last 20 years," Rafsanjani said, in what the NCRI claimed amounted to an admission of the "regime's intentions to acquire (a) nuclear weapon."