The U.S. has persuaded Israel that Iran would take a year or longer to build a nuclear weapon, dimming the prospects of a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, The New York Times said late Thursday.
The U.S. has persuaded Israel that Iran would take a year or longer to
build a nuclear weapon, dimming the prospects of a preemptive strike on Iran's
nuclear facilities, The New York Times said late Thursday.
"We think that they have roughly a year dash time," U.S. President
Barack Obama's top adviser on nuclear issues, Gary Samore, was quoted as saying
in the daily's online edition.
By "dash time," the official referred to the shortest time
Iran
would
take to build a nuclear weapon, judging from its existing facilities and
capacity to convert stocks of low-enriched uranium into weapons-grade material,
a process known as "breakout."
Samore said the
U.S.
believes international inspectors would detect any Iranian move toward
"breakout" within weeks, leaving the
U.S.
and
Israel
ample
time to craft a response.
Israel
has
hinted in the past it would likely attack Iranian nuclear facilities should the
Islamic republic try to build an atomic bomb it would consider a direct threat
to Israeli territory.
Israel
believes
Iran
is
only months away from such a scenario, while the
U.S.
intelligence thinks it would take longer.
Based on intelligence collected over the past year, the new
U.S.
assessment isn't clear on what problems
Iran
's
uranium enrichment program--which it insists is for peaceful purposes--is
confronting.
The daily said the lag could be due to poor centrifuge design, difficulty in
obtaining components or accelerated Western efforts to sabotage the nuclear
program.
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