Former president of Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who still plays an active role in the nation's leadership, recently admitted that the purpose of the Iranian nuclear program was to develop a nuclear weapon, despite the current regime's claims that the program is for peaceful purposes only. The Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran was the first to report on Rafsanjani's remarks, in the Iranian magazine Nuclear Hope. The remarks were reprinted in Farsi on the official IRNA news site. According to the organization, Rafsanjani, now the chairman of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council, said that Iran had begun working toward a nuclear weapon when it was at war with Iraq. "Our basic doctrine was peaceful usage of the nuclear technology, although we never abandoned the idea that if one day we are threatened and it is imperative, we would have the capability for going the other path [to a nuclear weapon] as well," he said. Rafsanjani also said he had traveled to Pakistan to try to meet with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who later helped North Korea to develop a bomb, but did not meet with him.
