Fox News, citing a new intelligence report from Austrian officials, has reported that Iran’s regime is still actively advancing its nuclear weapons program — a program that, according to the report, could be used in launching long-range missiles.
Fox News in its report wrote that: “The startling intelligence gathering of Austrian officials contradicts the assessment of the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).”
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence of the United States, had stated in a March session of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
Austrian intelligence report
However, the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which functions similarly to the FBI in the U.S. in terms of domestic security, wrote in an intelligence report on Monday:
“In order to assert and enforce its regional political power ambitions, the Islamic Republic of Iran is striving for comprehensive rearmament, with nuclear weapons to make the regime immune to attack and to expand and consolidate its dominance in the Middle East and beyond.”
Fox News, which obtained a copy of the report, added that the document also states:
“The Iranian nuclear weapons development program is well advanced, and Iran possesses a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long distances.”
The intelligence document states: “Iran has developed sophisticated sanctions-evasion networks, which has benefited Russia.”
According to Fox News, the Austrian intelligence findings could hinder negotiations between the United States and Iran’s regime over resolving the nuclear crisis, as the data presented in the report indicate that Iran’s regime has no intention of giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In response to this report, a White House official told Fox News Digital:
“President Trump is committed to Iran never obtaining a nuclear weapon or the capacity to build one.”
In this 211-page report, which addresses serious threats to Austria’s democracy, Iran’s regime is mentioned 99 times as a state sponsor of terrorism and as possessing an illegal nuclear weapons program.
The Austrian intelligence agency stated that “Vienna is home to one of the largest embassies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Europe, which disguises intelligence officers with diplomatic.”
In 2021, a court in Belgium convicted Asadollah Asadi, an Iranian regime diplomat stationed in Vienna, for planning a bombing at a gathering of the Iranian Resistance on the outskirts of Paris in 2018. The event was attended by tens of thousands of people, including politicians and lawmakers from across the world.
Differences between European and U.S. intelligence reports
David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital about the difference in assessments between the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution:
“The ODNI report is stuck in the past, a remnant of the fallacious unclassified 2007 NIE [National Intelligence Estimate].”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and both the U.S. State Department and National Security Council did not respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiries on the matter.
In 2023, Fox News Digital published new intelligence documents showing that Iran’s regime had attempted to circumvent U.S. and EU sanctions to acquire the technology needed for its nuclear weapons program and move toward testing a nuclear bomb.
According to reports from European intelligence agencies, Iran’s regime has continued its illegal efforts to obtain technologies used in nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs both before and after the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA).
The Austrian intelligence report also mentions Iran’s regime supplying weapons to U.S.-sanctioned terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as to Syrian militias.
