Iran would need 18 months for atom bomb

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Iran would need 18 months for atom bomb - diplomats

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-26 13:22

But an Israeli official linked to the country's security cabinet described the 18-month timeline as "reasonable."

A recently retired Israeli government intelligence analyst who still has access to briefings also said the reasoning was solid: "You can argue about the timeline - a few months here or there - but that's not relevant to the big picture."

David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, said it was in line with information he has.

"It's consistent with what I was told by a senior European intelligence official," he said.

But one Western intelligence official expressed doubt that Iran would be able to produce a bomb so quickly, describing the 18-month minimum timeline as unrealistic. "Do they have the knowledge and wherewithal to produce highly enriched uranium now?" the official said. "I'm skeptical."

The diplomats who described the timeline said there was much about Iran's nuclear program that intelligence agencies and the Vienna-based UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were ignorant about because of Tehran's secretiveness.

"We are all very mindful of what happened in Iraq," one diplomat said. "There is so much we don't know."

One of the justifications for the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had been US and British assertions - now known to have been erroneous - that Iraq's late leader Saddam Hussein had revived his clandestine nuclear arms program.

The diplomats said it was very possible Iran had another undeclared enrichment plant hidden somewhere, similar to the recently exposed site near Qom which IAEA inspectors visited for the first time on Sunday. The Qom site's existence was revealed last month by the United States, Britain and France.

One intelligence official told Reuters that even if Iran had another such plant it would probably not be able to produce significant quantities of enriched uranium and would therefore not have much of an impact on the presumed timeline.

The diplomats said Western intelligence agencies continued to have their disagreements on Iran, above all regarding the US 2007 National Intelligence Assessment (NIE) that concluded Iran had ended its nuclear weaponization program in 2003.

Israeli and European intelligence experts disagree with that assessment and believe Iran's research on fabricating a nuclear weapon has continued. The diplomats said US intelligence agencies were considering revising the 2007 NIE.

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