NEW YORK — Iran will reach the nuclear threshold by the end of the year, Israel’s military intelligence chief says.
Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, speaking last week to the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee, said that by late 2009, the Islamic Republic will have reached the point where obtaining a nuclear weapon will hinge on the decision of its leadership, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing Israel Radio.
Baidatz said he believed the international community has come to terms with a nuclear Iran.
In a related development, the London Times reported Monday that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not yet decided whether to give the go-ahead to build a nuclear weapon.
In a clear contradiction of the Israeli intelligence report, U.S. intelligence sources in Washington later in the week reported that Iran will not have the capacity to produce highly enriched uranium until 2013 and has yet to decide to produce a bomb.
The assessment appears in answers provided in April by the director for U.S. national intelligence, Dennis Blair, in response to congressional inquiries. The document was declassified this week through the efforts of the Federation of American Scientists strategic security program’s secrecy project, which works to make available government documents that relate to world security challenges.
Blair said that in 2007 and 2008, Iran made “significant progress” in installing and operating centrifuges, but the country will not have the capacity to enrich uranium to levels necessary for a nuclear device before 2013. Blair also noted that one of the intelligence agencies, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “assesses that Iran is unlikely” to decided to produce highly enriched uranium “at least as long as international scrutiny and pressure persist.”
Iran remains a threat to regional stability because of its backing for radical groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, Blair said, adding that the anti-Israel terrorist groups are “integral” to Iran’s “efforts to build influence in the Middle East and challenge Israeli and western influence in the region.”
Iran has provided Hezbollah with “significant amounts of funding, training and weapons” since its 2006 war with Israel and has also bolstered Hamas’ strike capability in recent years.
Blair said Hamas and Hezbollah appear unlikely in the short term to relaunch attacks on Israel, since such attacks would corrode their popular support because of the prospect of retaliation.
Nonetheless, Hezbollah “remains the most technically capable terrorist group in the world” and would attack U.S. interests “should it perceive a direct U.S. threat to the group’s survival, leadership, or infrastructure, or to Iran,” Blair said.