KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Iran is at least two to three years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon, a leading global think-tank said today.
But the International Institute for Strategic Studies said pressure on the United States to stop the programme, including possibly through military strikes, would
increase this year as Tehran mastered the process of enriching uranium.
The IISS said Iran's stockpile of 250 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the raw material for feeding into linked cascades of centrifuges, was enough to produce between 30 and 50 nuclear weapons when enriched.
"The main bottleneck to producing such weapons remains learning how to run UF6 through the cascades for extended periods. If Iran overcomes the technical hurdles, the possibility of military options to stop the programme will of course increase," IISS Director-General John Chipman said.
The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran on December 23 and gave it 60 days to suspend uranium enrichment. Tehran denies pursuing the bomb and says it is developing nuclear energy only to generate electricity.
An Iranian parliamentarian said on Saturday that Iran had started installing 3,000 new atomic centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, although this was later denied by an Iranian nuclear official.
Chipman, presenting the IISS annual report, "The Military Balance", said Iran was probably on track to meet its goal of producing 3,000 centrifuges by the end of March or soon after.
He said there would be no technical logic in installing them all until Tehran had succeeded in running two smaller experimental cascades of 164 centrifuges each, something it has yet to achieve on a continuous basis.
Negotiating ploy
But Iran might go ahead anyway to signal technological prowess to its people and defiance to the West, and to position itself for any subsequent negotiations on capping the size of its enrichment programme.
If and when Iran does have 3,000 centrifuges operating smoothly, the IISS estimates it would take an additional nine to 11 months to produce 25 kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for one nuclear weapon.
"That day is still two to three years away at the earliest," Chipman said.
Mark Fitzpatrick, non-proliferation expert at the IISS and a former US State Department official, said Washington would be pleased by signs of mounting domestic criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Tehran felt the impact of the UN sanctions, political and financial pressure.
But pressure on the United States to stop Iran's programme, including potentially by military strikes, would increase as Tehran mastered the enrichment process to the point where it could set up new centrifuge cascades at secret sites.
"I don't think Washington is giving up on diplomacy," Fitzpatrick said. "As the year goes on, the pressures will increase, though, to see whether this programme can be stopped."
Neither Israel nor the United States has ruled out military force, although Washington says its priority is to reach a diplomatic solution.
Some analysts are sceptical whether bombing strikes could destroy the Iranian programme, which is spread across numerous sites, some of them underground. They also fear Iranian retaliation and destabilisation of the wider region.
The head of the UN's nuclear agency said last week an attack on Iran would be "absolutely counterproductive and...catastrophic".
- REUTERS
