Iran is believed in foreign intelligence circles to have paused formal nuclear-weapon design efforts six years ago after gaining the technical proficiency to build a bomb, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, May 6).
(May. 7) -
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, visits his country's Natanz uranium enrichment complex in 2008. Iran has the technical proficiency to build a nuclear weapon, says a new U.S. Senate report (Getty Images).
According to a new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, "intelligence indicates Iran had produced a suitable design, manufactured some components and conducted enough successful explosives tests to put the project on the shelf until it manufactured the fissile material required for several weapons."
The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program indicated that global pressure had led Tehran to suspend nuclear-weapon operations in 2003, AP reported.
The report indicates that the conclusion was based on information from "intelligence analysts and nuclear experts working for foreign governments."
"Unclassified U.S. intelligence assessments and staff interviews with government officials and diplomats in Washington and foreign countries leave little doubt that Iran has the technological and industrial capacity to eventually develop an atomic bomb," the report says.
The report also affirms the authenticity of seeming nuclear-weapon information allegedly smuggled out of Iran, turned over to U.S. intelligence officials and later furnished to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The electronic files included such details as missile flight patterns and best warhead detonation altitudes, along with video footage of facilities that intelligence officials described as clandestine Iranian nuclear laboratories.
Iran, which insists its nuclear program never had any military component, has dismissed the electronic documents as U.S. forgeries. However, Senate investigators spoke with officials who said the files "appear to be authentic, right down to the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the workshops," according to the report.
Iran has continued using front firms to pursue components for higher-speed uranium enrichment centrifuges, machines that can produce nuclear power plant fuel but also nuclear-weapon material, the report says. It adds that Tehran in summer 2008 reversed a decision to let IAEA officials inspect possible nuclear workshops (Desmond Butler, Associated Press/Google News, May 6).
"The ultimate solution to the conundrum of Iran's nuclear ambitions is not technical, but political," congressional investigators told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to Agence France-Presse.
"Only a political decision by the country's leaders is likely to prevent Iran from someday producing a nuclear weapon. And that decision is inherently reversible," the report states.
"At a minimum, one goal of the administration's strategy on Iran should be to provide the right balance of pressure and opportunity to persuade the regime to agree not to take any further steps toward enhancing its capability to build a bomb and to accept strict verification standards," the report says (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, May 7).
"We are not in 'regime change' mode," committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said yesterday (Oliver Knox, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, May 6).
Meanwhile, Germany has pressed domestic firms to halt trade with Iran in an effort to pressure Tehran to shut down its disputed nuclear work, AFP reported.
Germany exported $5.2 billion in goods to Iran last year, an 8.3 percent increase from 2007, government statistics indicate.
In an April 27 letter, the German Economy Ministry urged companies not to join two business conferences that Iranian representatives were expected to attend.
"These events stand in clear contrast to the policy of the federal government and could mean serious damage for German foreign policy," the newspaper Handelsblatt quoted the letter as saying (Agence France-Presse III/Spacewar.com, May 7).