Iran Earthquake Sparks Speculation, Rumors Of Covert Nuclear Weapons Test

On Saturday a 4.5-magnitude seismic event occurred in Iran’s Semnan province, sparking speculation that Iran has tested a nuclear weapon for the first time. Such a seismic event is typically the result of an earthquake, but speculation has arisen on social media suggesting the event was instead an underground nuclear test carried out by the Islamic Republic in response to Israeli threats to bomb Tehran’s nuclear energy and oil facilities.  

According to Iranian sources speaking with The Cradle, the possibility that a nuclear test was indeed conducted is being discussed at high levels in Iran. Syrian sources speaking with The Cradle in September predicted that Iran would seek to develop breakout nuclear weapons capability in response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Iran launched at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, causing damage to three airbases on October 1, following Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC commander Abbas Nilforushan on September 27. Iran is now awaiting a possible Israeli response.

The speculation that Iran carried out a nuclear test comes just days after the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank in the US, published a report stating that "Iran can produce nuclear weapons far more rapidly than expected."

Published on October 1st, the report noted that in late April 2024, a senior Iranian lawmaker stated that there is only a "one-week gap from the issuance of the order to the first test" of a nuclear bomb.

In May, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Iran may be forced to change its nuclear doctrine, which until now has called only for using nuclear technology for civilian purposes. "We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine," Kamal Kharrazi stated.

The Heritage Foundation report added that in July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to corroborate this claim when he stated that "instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, [Iran] is now probably one or two weeks away."

The statements accompanied a significant increase in Iran’s stockpile of Uranium enriched to the 60 percent level between May and August 2024, according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Notably, Uranium that is enriched up to 60 percent purity is just a short, technical step away from the 90 percent required for nuclear weapons, the report added.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracy (FDD), an Israeli-linked think tank based in Washington, DC, issued a report in 2019 claiming that Iran had begun a program to build underground nuclear test sites starting in the 2000s known as "Project Midan."

The FDD stated, "Using openly available, corroborating geospatial information, we have identified the likely location (in an area southeast of Semnan) where underground non-nuclear explosives tests were conducted in 2003 as part of developing seismic methods of measuring the yield of an underground nuclear explosive."