In the late '80s he bought a lot of dual-use technology that could be used to make chemical weapons. He also bought a lot of precursor chemicals, primarily from places like the Netherlands, although perhaps 10% came from the US and US-owned companies.
These he made into chemical weapons. Chem weapons tech is fairly cheap and fast to implement. Nuclear tech is a bit harder to come by--no Kim or Khan to help out their brothers-in-outlaw working for global pieces.
Bio weapons were a bit harder and less productive. But he never gave up and even in 2000, as far as any evidence is available, still wanted to reconstitute his nuclear weapons programs. He had mothballed a lot of technology, sidelined researchers, archived research results, and had some raw materials his guys thought they'd need stockpiled.
A lot of people assumed that as soon as public scrutiny and sanctions were lifted he'd revert to form. In the late '90s and in 2000 there was a pretty big hue and cry for lifting the sanctions.
Iran's ahead of Saddam. Iran's ahead of where Saddam would have been had he completed the Osirak reactor. Part of the OP's argument is built on where to draw the line in determining what counts as "evidence." Some make the standard so high that they can claim there's no evidence Iran has anything but the purest of pacific motives in their nuclear program (other's flip the syllogism--Iran has only the purest of peaceful motives, so how could there possibly be any evidence?). Others set the standard for evidence so low that they believe that Iran certainly must have all the components for a dozen nuclear bombs sitting around, each part numbered, with schematics for assembly and an assembly crew on an extended 329-day lunch break just itching to get to work and blow up some Zionist Jews that populate New York and DC and Tel Aviv. The OP sets the standard probably a bit too high, deciding that any but incontrovertible evidence must be ignored. My take is that there's good evidence that can't be ignored--but there's also a lot of evidence that may be wrong but should be considered simply because the stakes are high.
= new reply since forum marked as read