(Reuters) - U.S. intelligence
agencies believe Iranian
leaders have not yet decided
to build a nuclear bomb, and
some officials say recent
problems affecting Tehran's
nuclear equipment and
personnel have set back Iran's
nuclear program by two years
or more.
The latest assessments, based at least in part on
Israeli intelligence, appear to have eased political
pressures on Israeli and American leaders for a
military strike against Iran's nuclear infrastructure,
according to current and former officials familiar
with the intelligence.
These developments have also given the
administration of President Barack Obama
breathing room to pursue a two-pronged
strategy of seeking greater diplomatic
engagement with Tehran while also threatening
increased economic sanctions, they said.
Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists and a
computer virus which allegedly infected control
systems for Iran's uranium enrichment
equipment have likely slowed Iran's nuclear
progress, Israeli intelligence sources have said.
That evaluation is shared by some, but not all,
U.S. nuclear and intelligence experts.
"We've got more time than we thought," said
Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the
Central Intelligence Agency.
Hayden said he now believes the "key decision
point" for possible military action against Iran has
been postponed until the "next (U.S.) presidential
term" which would be after the 2012 election.
At the same time, current and former U.S.
national security and intelligence officials believe
Iran is actively trying to assemble the
infrastructure and know-how for atomic bomb
production if and when political leaders decide to
build one.
A current U.S. official who is following the issue
closely told Reuters: "The intelligence folks think
that the Iranians aren't necessarily moving full
steam ahead with the development of a nuclear
weapon, but that there's fairly robust debate
inside the Iranian regime on whether to go
forward."
"This is a momentous decision for an isolated
government, and people are watching very
closely to see what they do."
The official added that, "Even if (the Iranians)
choose to do the wrong thing and proceed
toward nuclear weapons, it's unclear that they
could do so quickly. While they've got a lot of
knowledge, putting it into practice is a whole
different ball game."
Six major powers -- the United States, Britain,
Russia, Germany, France, and China -- are
meeting with Iran next week in Istanbul to seek
assurances that it is not trying to develop nuclear
weapons. Tehran says its nuclear work is for
production of electricity.
"BREAKOUT CAPABILITY" SOUGHT
For years, a key point of debate among analysts
has been estimating how quickly Iranian scientists
and engineers could build a bomb once political
leaders gave the word.
The most recent -- and controversial --
consensus of U.S. spy agencies issued in 2007
reported that Iran had "halted its nuclear weapons
program" in the autumn of 2003, although
Tehran was "keeping open the option to develop
nuclear weapons."
The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate suggested
it was conceivable Iran might be able to produce
enough bomb-grade uranium to build a weapon
at the earliest in 2010. But U.S. agencies believed
the Iranians' ability to achieve this was more likely
after 2015.Some Israeli intelligence experts strongly
disagreed, suggesting publicly following the
report's release that Iran might be able to build a
bomb within months rather than years.
The 2007 assessment took the steam out of
efforts by some hard-liners in the administration
of President George W. Bush to seek harsher
sanctions, or even military action against Iran.
Despite criticism from conservatives, U.S.
intelligence agencies stuck by the 2007
assessment until the revelation in 2009 of Iran's
secret underground enrichment facility near the
holy city of Qom.
That discovery and other classified intelligence
alarmed the intelligence community and forced a
re-evaluation of when Iran could reach a
"breakout capability" threshold, making it capable
of assembling a nuclear weapon.
A consensus began to develop among U.S.
government experts that Iran may well have
resumed the kind of nuclear related research and
development activities that could hasten the
timeline toward building a bomb.
MAJOR ISRAELI SHIFT
In the last few days, however, the assessment in
the United States and Israel seems to be shifting
back toward the 2007 intelligence evaluation of
slower Iranian nuclear progress.
Israelis, who had claimed Iran's bomb-making
was advanced enough to produce a device within
a matter of months, appeared to significantly
revise their outlook.
Meir Dagan, outgoing director of Israel's principal
intelligence agency, Mossad, said Tehran would
not be able to build a bomb for at least four years
"because of measures that have been deployed
against them."
Israel sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its
existence. It bombed an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and
a suspected Syrian nuclear site in 2007 to disrupt
nuclear programs in those two Arab states.
Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East's
only atomic arsenal, but many analysts say its air
force is too small to take on Iran's nuclear sites on
its own.
Following the Israeli statements, word began to
circulate among U.S. intelligence officials about a
new push to complete the long-awaited updated
National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian
nuclear program.
An official with the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence would not comment, citing a
long-standing policy not to discuss these reports
or even acknowledge their existence.
Some American experts question whether the
revised Israeli view of Iran's nuclear glitches could
be too optimistic and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu also seemed to question the
Israeli intelligence view.
A few days after Dagan's assessment, Netanyahu
insisted the Iranians were still intent on getting a
nuclear weapon and that only a combination of
sanctions and a credible threat of military action
would be effective deterrents.
David Albright, a former United Nations weapons
inspector who heads the Institute for Science and
International Security, a Washington think tank,
told Reuters that his own analysis still indicated
Iran's nuclear research could reach a breakout
point for bomb building in a year or two.
Albright said he did not understand why Israelis
like Dagan were so confident Iran will remain
incapable of putting together a bomb any earlier
than 2015.
Source: Http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70B79P20110112?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
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