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How urgent a threat is Iran's nuclear program? It depends who you ask. But the answer to the question could determine the time-frame and posture the Obama Administration adopts in its diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff.
"From all the information I've seen," CIA chief Leon Panetta said on Capitol Hill last month, "I think there is no question that they are seeking [nuclear weapons] capability." Israel and more hawkish voices in Washington concur, and stress that Iran has already crossed the key technological threshold in what they portray as a headlong drive to attain atomic weapons. But the U.S. military and intelligence community says that while Iran is assembling a technological infrastructure that would enable it to develop nuclear weapons, it has produced no weapons-grade materiel. In fact, according to the Obama's Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, Tehran has not yet taken the fateful decision to actually use its new technological capacity to develop weapons.
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Admiral Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that "the intelligence community agrees ... that Iran has not decided to press forward... to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile," adding that "Our current estimate is that the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015."
Iran's current uranium-enrichment efforts are strictly monitored by international inspectors who have certified that they have produced only low-enriched uranium (LEU), which can't be used in weapons and is kept under seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But the fear is that Iran is developing "breakout capacity" — putting bomb development within fairly easy reach if it opted to break out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its inspection regime, and reprocess that LEU to bomb-grade materiel.
President George W. Bush often spoke of the need to stop Iran from "mastering the technology" of enriching uranium, but that goal has been rendered moot by Iran's growing stockpile of LEU. The IAEA inspectors have found that Iran had produced around 1,000 kilograms of LEU, which, if reprocessed, would be enough to create a single, crude nuclear device. But media reports spinning that fact as meaning that "Iran now has enough uranium for a bomb" prompted Defense Secretary Robert Gates to make clear that Iran was, in fact, nowhere near nuclear-weapons capability. To begin reprocessing its current stockpile into bomb materiel would require kicking out IAEA inspectors. Developing bombs and other aspects of a combat-ready nuclear-weapons arsenal would take still more years. And the working assumption of many involved in diplomacy around Iran's nuclear program is that if Iran signaled its intention to weaponize by ousting IAEA inspectors, it would probably trigger a preemptive military strike by the U.S. or Israel.
So, while there's general agreement that the clock is ticking, there's some dispute over just how close it is to midnight: If Iran is holding off on building nuclear weapons, for example, the U.S. and its allies arguably have greater time and space to find a diplomatic solution. But for Israel and many in Washington, an Iran with "breakout" capacity is not much more tolerable than a nuclear-armed Iran, and they see reversing Iran's current enrichment achievements as the goal of any diplomacy, and as a matter of urgency. After all, uranium enrichment has been a "fact on the ground" in Iraq for a number of years now, and the chances of entirely reversing that fact diminish with the passage of time.
From this perspective, time is short for a diplomatic solution. The English-language web edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that Maj. Gen Amos Yadlin, Israel's military intelligence chief, warned his country's cabinet last week that "Iran has crossed the technological threshold, so that reaching a military nuclear ability is only a matter of matching the strategy to the goal of creating a nuclear bomb." adding that "Iran continues to accumulate hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium of poor quality, and hopes to take advantage of its dialogue with the West and the government in Washington in order to advance towards creating a nuclear bomb."
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Israel recently, its leaders urged that any dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program be necessarily brief, and also that it be preceded by harsher sanctions, with worse to follow if the Iranians fail to back down. Israel's leaders reinforce that argument by signaling that if the diplomatic effort fails to stop Iran's nuclear efforts within a time frame assessed by Israel, it would launch a military strike on Iranian facilities — an option whose consequences are deemed so potentially catastrophic in Washington and European capitals that threatening it creates greater urgency in the diplomatic process.
The Israelis don't believe Iran has any intention of backing down until they're forced to, and negotiations are therefore simply a precursor to tougher action — and helpful in building international support for more punitive measures. Clinton reportedly told Gulf leaders meeting in Egypt two weeks ago that that it was "very doubtful" that Iran would relent on its uranium enrichment program, but argued that talking to Iran would demonstrate that the U.S. had exhausted diplomatic routes, helping it persuade reluctant allies to ratchet up pressure.
The Obama Administration is currently honing its Iran strategy behind closed doors, amid a wider debate in Washington and beyond over the timeline available for a diplomatic solution, and how that diplomacy should be handled. Some have suggested a take-it-or-leave it offer of enhanced incentives, accompanied by a big stick and on a tight deadline; others are advocating a slower process of diplomatic engagement building toward a "grand bargain" that resolves the nuclear standoff as part of a wider understanding between the U.S. and Iran in which each recognizes the other's interests and concerns in the region. But while some will be warning the President that time is short and the danger is mounting, others will caution that alarmist assessments could narrow Obama's options and escalate the standoff to a point of confrontation. The new President's answers to these questions may yet determine his legacy in the Middle East.
This article originally appeared on TIME.comChina's Own Version of the Real Estate Bust Afghanistan: The Taliban Were Here
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