Could Iran Acquire A Nuclear Weapon – Right Now?

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson claims Pakistan’s foreign minister personally delivered a message to Secretary Marco Rubio on Friday stating that Iran is prepared to demonstrate a nuclear weapon should the current escalation continue. Let me be clear. I do not know if that claim is true or not.

I do think we ought to be having some very serious discussions about it, and I think first and foremost, we ought to be asking ourselves what we have done to prevent it from being true. In particular, what have we done to prevent another power with interests hostile to the United States from simply handing a nuclear weapon to Iran in the midst of this conflict and making this a reality?

Mark@Mark4XX

PAKISTAN FOREIGN MINISTER'S SECRET MESSAGE TO RUBIO: IRAN WILL DEMONSTRATE A NUCLEAR BOMB In a development that has flown under the radar of mainstream reporting, well-connected former CIA intelligence agent Larry Johnson has come forward with a direct warning from the highest

9:04 AM · Jun 2, 2026 · 59.3K Views

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We have imposed a naval blockade of Iran. In the wake of the imposition of that blockade, Pakistan announced the opening of six land routes into Iran from its territory. Vessels now dock in Pakistan, and containers are offloaded there for overland transit into Iran. It’s a bit more tedious and labor-intensive than simply sailing into a port on the Persian Gulf, and overland transport does not substitute for super tankers when it comes to oil.

For pretty much anything else you want to send to Iran, it works just fine. We here at AND have documented time and again how the Chinese are continuing to provide the Iranians with everything they need to build drones and missiles. Are we sure they would not use the same mechanism to help the Iranians across the finish line to nuclear weapons capability?

In April 2026, Gwadar Port in Pakistan processed around 11,000 standard shipping containers. For context, the same port handled roughly 8,300 containers throughout all of 2025. A large proportion of these containers came from China. Gwadar sits roughly 400 kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz. It has a deepwater port that allows large cargo vessels to dock. Anything could come from China via Gwadar and then be trucked into Iran. We have done nothing to interdict any of the major overland routes.

Even if we think Beijing is too sober-minded to arm Iran with nuclear weapons, are we sure North Korea would not? What about Pakistan, or for that matter, some cabal of radical Islamic Pakistan generals in Islamabad?

North Korea has a well-documented history of assisting Iran, primarily in ballistic missile technology and related military cooperation, dating back to the 1980s. This relationship is supported by U.S. intelligence assessments, UN reports, congressional research, and open-source analyses.

North Korea operates sophisticated, long-standing transnational networks for smuggling weapons, dual-use technology, and related materiel to evade UN sanctions and generate revenue. These networks rely on front companies, diplomats, intelligence operatives, ship-to-ship transfers, and third-country facilitators.

This is not some ad hoc setup. The North Koreans have gone to great lengths to develop the capability to move arms worldwide despite our best efforts to stop them. They operate ships under “flags of convenience” via front companies that show no outward sign of a connection to Pyongyang.

They spoof the Automated Identification System (AIS) on their vessels to transmit false identities and false locations. In some cases, they even physically alter the appearance of ships in their shipyards so they can change their identities.

The gaping overland container hole in our blockade is bad enough. But, for a nuclear weapon, you would not need cargo requiring a ship to transport. Everything could be moved by air, and in that regard, Iran is wide open. Flight volumes are reduced, but the airspace is not closed. We have not imposed a no-fly zone. The Iranian airline Mahan Air, known to move illicit Iranian government cargo, is operating regularly scheduled flights. It flies in and out of Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shenzhen in China multiple times a week.

None of this means that Larry Johnson’s claims are true. It does mean that at present, we have effectively no control over what is moving into Iran. If huge quantities of precursor chemicals for solid rocket fuel can continue to arrive by the ton every day, then no one can seriously contend that we are in a position to prevent the movement of functioning nuclear weapons into the country. We would do well, therefore, to consider the implications.

We don’t regularly decide to start bombing North Korea, despite its behavior, for one reason. The North Koreans have nuclear weapons. Everyone on the planet understands this.

Consider then the implications of an Iranian nuclear weapons test at a remote desert site in Iran tomorrow. Everything would change.

We would not know how many more they had. We would not know if they could put them on missiles or drones. We would not know if the next American or Israeli attack would trigger the destruction of multiple cities in the Middle East and perhaps Southern Europe. The world would shift on its axis, and everyone would know it.

We would do well then to ponder the question. Could Iran acquire a nuclear weapon – right now? And what exactly are we doing to prevent it from doing so?