Iran could amass enough nuclear material to build a bomb in about a year and with help might eventually be able to field a missile powerful enough to reach the US, senior military and intelligence officials said on Wednesday.
Four top representatives of the administration of US President Barack Obama told Congress they were pursuing new sanctions on Iran urgently and added that a military strike had not been ruled out.
Obama has said he will not “take any options off the table with respect to Iran,” Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy said. “Now, that means to me that military options remain on the table.”
Iran is pursuing an aggressive missile program, including intercontinental missiles it would need outside expertise to perfect, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
That is not the same as saying that Iran is closing in on the means to launch a nuclear attack on the US, but the comments were among the Obama administration’s most precise public assessments of Iran’s military abilities and intentions to date.
Once Iran had decided to build one bomb, it could amass enough highly enriched uranium to do so in as little as 12 months, said General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He added that Tehran would still need additional time to test the weapon and make it usable against an enemy.
New nuclear nations generally need three to five additional years to produce a usable weapon, Cartwright said, but the timeline could be shortened if Iran should pursue a warhead and a missile or other delivery system at the same time.
Iran has spurned Obama’s attempts at diplomatic outreach, Undersecretary of State William Burns said.
“Iran’s reckless intransigence has left us no choice but to employ a second tool of diplomacy — economic and political pressure,” Burns said.
The US is leading a drive for more international economic sanctions on Iran in an effort to deter it from choosing the weapons path. The idea is to persuade an economically strapped Iran that going nuclear is not worth the loss of friends, trading partners and international standing.
Burns predicted a sanctions resolution would emerge from the UN Security Council within weeks and that one-time holdout China would go along, but the US wants tougher penalties than some other veto-holding members of the council and Burns would not say how tough he expects the resolution to be.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, traveling in Peru, said he thought progress had been made toward a UN resolution that would both isolate Iran and serve as “a launching pad for more specific sanctions by individual countries.”
Republican Senator John McCain complained that the US has been a paper tiger, threatening Iran but never fully confronting it.
“We keep pointing the gun. We haven’t pulled a single trigger yet and it’s about time that we did,” McCain said.
Opinions vary on how much damage a US or Israeli military strike could do to Iran’s nuclear program, which is intentionally opaque and dispersed between multiple facilities.
US officials generally say that a strike on one or more known facilities would set the program back a few years, but not stop it.
The US has also acknowledged that once a nation has sufficient nuclear scientific and technological prowess, it could rebound from nearly any assault on the facilities used for bomb development.
Officials would not say publicly whether the US has now changed its nearly four-year-old assessment that Iran is not actively seeking a bomb. The US government is preparing a new classified assessment of Iranian nuclear ability and intent.
The document is likely to conclude that Iran is at least three years from having a fully usable bomb, which includes the time needed to test a weapon and attach it to a missile or other means to deliver it.
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings are classified, said recent moves by Iran suggest a more active pursuit of weapons technology.
The officials cautioned, however, that the intelligence assessment may not conclude that Iran is now on a full drive for the bomb.
Iran claims that its accelerated nuclear program is aimed at producing energy, not weapons.
Iran’s nuclear chief said on Wednesday his country has produced 5kg of 20 percent enriched uranium for a medical research reactor, a move in open defiance of UN demands that the suspect program be halted
The level of enrichment is well shy of the 80 percent or 90 percent pure uranium needed to build a nuclear weapon.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in