Eight of the world’s nine nuclear powers detonated a device before anyone called them nuclear powers. The ninth is Israel, and its case has gone unresolved for 47 years.

Iran has detonated nothing. Two earthquakes raised suspicion of a secret test, one in Semnan province in October 2024 and one in Fars province in March of this year. Both turned out to be tectonic. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which operates a global network of more than 300 stations based in Vienna, compared waveforms from dozens of stations and found nothing resembling a blast.

Everything the world knows about Iran’s nuclear program comes from inspections, documents, uranium accounting, defectors, and an archive stolen from Tehran. None of it comes from an explosion. That distinction matters. The International Atomic Energy Agency depends on access that can be revoked overnight. The CTBTO does not. Its sensors listen whether Iran cooperates or not.

So what would it take to know, with evidence rather than inference, that Iran had crossed the line?

Five nuclear powers tested to announce themselves. The United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China all detonated in the atmosphere before 1965. The Non-Proliferation Treaty later defined a nuclear-weapon state as one that tested before January 1, 1967. Three others tested to force recognition: India in 1974 and 1998, Pakistan weeks later, and North Korea six times from 2006 to 2017. All were detected within minutes.

Israel did neither. No confirmed test, no declared arsenal, no signature on the NPT. The closest call came on September 22, 1979, when an American satellite recorded a double flash over the Indian Ocean, the optical signature of an atmospheric detonation. The same satellites had caught 41 such flashes before, every one of them a known nuclear test. The CIA put the probability of a nuclear test at 90 percent plus. A White House panel concluded otherwise, and declassified memoranda show its staff agreeing to hear out the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)