its own chemical weapons program. The Washington Post reports that a WikiLeaks cable written by a US diplomat in 2006 reported on what German officials said they had learned. “Iran would provide the construction design and equipment to annually produce tens to hundreds of tons of precursors for VX, sarin and mustard [gas]. Engineers from Iran’s DIO [Defense Industries Organization] were to visit Syria and survey locations for the plants,” the cable said. The Islamic Republic began a chemical weapons program in the mid-1980s to retaliate for Iraqi use of chemicals on the battlefields in the 1980-88 war. The US says the program still exists, although it gets little attention due to all the focus on Iran’s nuclear program.
