Iran could develop nuclear bomb-making capability within five years, but a longer timeframe is more likely, a leading thinktank said on Tuesday.
A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies found that international political opposition to Tehran pushing ahead with its nuclear programme made it probable that a 10-15 year timescale was more realistic.
”In a purely technical basis, Iran has a number of obstacles it needs to overcome before it can produce enough material for a nuclear weapon,” the report’s editor, Gary Samore, told the BBC. ”We estimate that if they threw all their effort into solving the problems they might be able to produce enough weapons grade uranium to produce a single weapon within five years.
”But Tehran is acting in a political way to limit international opposition to its activities. It is more likely that Iran would try to accumulate production capability over a much longer period of time, 10 or 15 years, before it makes a decision about whether it wants to produce nuclear weapons.”
The evaluation comes two weeks before the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discusses whether to send Iran to the security council, possibly prompting sanctions.
Iran resumed sensitive nuclear work last month, bringing two years of talks about its atomic programme with the European Union trio of Britain, France and Germany close to collapse.
Despite denials from Tehran, the EU and the United States suspect Iran wants to use a civilian nuclear programme as a cover for developing atomic weapons.
”When you talk to Iranians, there seems to be a consensus that Iran needs to have a latent nuclear weapons capability; in other words, an option,” Samore said. ”But there is much less agreement about whether it makes sense for Iran to produce nuclear weapons.”
He said the EU efforts over the past two years had had some success in limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions before the election in June of a conservative government triggered a harder nuclear stance.
”What remains to be seen is whether the threat of referral to the UN security council will be enough to persuade Tehran to keep some limits on its programme,” Samore said. – Guardian Unlimited Â