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When asked about the differences in conclusions between the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Austrian intelligence report, David Albright, a physicist and founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital, “The ODNI report is stuck in the past, a remnant of the fallacious unclassified 2007 NIE [National Intelligence Estimate].
“The Austrian report in general is similar to German and British assessments. Both governments, by the way, made clear to (the) U.S. IC [intelligence community] in 2007 that they thought the U.S. assessment was wrong that the Iranian nuclear weapons program ended in 2003.
U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff shakes hands with Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi in Muscat, Oman, April 12, 2025. (Oman News Agency/ Handout via Reuters)
“The German assessment is from BND [Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service] station chief in D.C. at that time. The British info is from a senior British non-proliferation official I was having dinner with the day the 2007 NIE was made public. The German said the U.S. was misinterpreting data they all possessed.”Â
The Austrian intelligence findings that Tehran is working on an active atomic weapons program “seems clear enough,” said Albright.
In 2023, Fox News Digital revealed a fresh batch of European intelligence reports showed that Iran sought to bypass U.S. and EU sanctions to secure technology for its nuclear weapons program with a view toward testing an atomic bomb.
European intelligence agencies have documented prior to 2015 and after the Iran nuclear deal( JCPOA) was agreed upon that Tehran continued efforts to illegally secure technology for its atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction programs.Â
The Austrian intelligence report noted that Iran provides weapons to the U.S.-designated terrorist movements Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as to Syrian militias.
A spokesperson for ODNI declined to comment. The U.S. State Department and U.S. National Security Council did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital press queries.
