Iran a Decade Away From Producing Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Intelligence Forecasts

Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon capability, but it is still about 10 years away from producing enough fissile material, according to a recent assessment reflecting the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies (see GSN, Aug. 1).

The new National Intelligence Estimate says that Tehran is unlikely to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon before “early to mid-next decade,” according to four sources familiar with the report, the Washington Post reported today. 

The new estimate is in line with new British and Israeli intelligence, according to the Post.

U.S. officials have since 1995 made the case that Iran is “within five years” of acquiring a nuclear weapon, according to the Post. Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, most recently repeated that assertion in congressional testimony in February.

The new estimate is the first major review of intelligence on Iran since 2001, the Post reported.

The report also says there are “credible indicators” that the Iranian military is conducting clandestine work, though there is no concrete information that such work is related to nuclear weapons. Suspicions that the Iranian military has been running a separate, clandestine nuclear effort have faded somewhat, according to the sources, but some evidence remains of continuing military centrifuge and missile research.

A senior intelligence official familiar with the findings, however, said that “it is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons.”

Mainly through its nuclear energy program, Tehran is acquiring technologies that could be used to build atomic weapons, the estimate says (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, Aug. 2).

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