Top U.S. intelligence officials testifying Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee said that Iran was yet to decide whether to build a nuclear bomb or not, but at present lacked the weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium needed to build one, media reports say.
National Intelligence director Admiral Dennis Blair told U.S. law-makers that Tehran had only low-enriched uranium, which would need processing to be used for weapons. However, he said, Tehran was enriching uranium in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and was "mastering" the know-how to build long-range missiles that could carry nuclear warheads to targets oceans away.
He further said that most spy agencies believed the Islamic nation would probably be able to produce highly-enriched uranium somewhere around 2010-2015, while the U.S. State Department set the date at 2013.
"Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons or not, we assess Tehran, at a minimum, is keeping open the option to develop them," Blair told the senators.
He also said that the U.S. view was at odds with that of its staunch ally Israel, which was far more concerned about the developments, and was taking a far more worst-case approach to these things from its (Israel's) point of view.
Blair cautioned it would be "difficult" to convince Tehran through diplomatic means to abandon its nuclear ambitions. It might bow to a combination of "credible" incentives and threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures but it was difficult to specify the right combination.
Testifying before the same committee, Lieutenant-General Michael Maples, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said he agreed with Adm. Blair, adding that Iran would see its revenues decline this year, as oil prices remained at low levels. Defense-spending would have to be balanced with social programs.
The two noted that Iran was building and acquiring advanced defenses against air strikes--which experts saw as a likely path for a military effort to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
Their comments came a week after Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iran had enough "fissile material" to make a bomb, while Israel's top intelligence official Amos Yadlin earlier this week said Iran had "crossed the technological threshold" and was now capable of making a weapon.
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