Iran's nuclear potential raises alarm

VIENNA -- With each passing day, Iran could be getting closer to making a nuclear bomb -- at least that's what the US government and a growing number of nonproliferation officials believe.

Having shown an ability to enrich uranium, and with an emerging infrastructure that could potentially produce large quantities of weapons-grade material, Tehran could reach that threshold in just a few years, according to the officials, diplomats, and analysts.

In the nearly two years since the International Atomic Energy Agency began probing Iran's nuclear program, the sense of alarm has become increasingly widespread. That apprehension increased yesterday when Iran announced that it was considering resuming uranium enrichment activities, a move that would reverse a voluntary moratorium.

"They know how to drive, and now they just need to build a car," said a senior Western official in Vienna familiar with the Iranian situation.

"Provided they don't hit any bottlenecks, they are about two to five years away," said the official, who like most in the secretive field of nuclear monitoring, spoke on condition of anonymity. More conservative estimates say they could be a decade away.

At first glance, there would appear to be bottlenecks aplenty. Since Iran last fall acknowledged conducting nearly two decades of clandestine research in uranium enrichment, the nation's nuclear industry has come under unprecedented scrutiny -- including a stringent new regime of snap inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog organization.

But despite the intensive spotlight on Tehran's nuclear program, officials here believe Iran already has crossed a critical threshold in know-how and soon could be in position to develop an atomic weapon.

"They are just sitting on a nice capability to enrich uranium," said another senior Western diplomat close to the Vienna-based agency. "Right now, Iran can produce small amounts of fissile material. But once they can produce large amounts, the bomb is just months away."

On Friday, the IAEA adopted a resolution "deploring" that Iran has not cooperated fully with the agency, specifically that the nation has continuously held back crucial information about technology that is potentially weapons-related. The organization is also investigating recently disclosed satellite photos of what some officials believe could be an undeclared nuclear site in Iran where buildings were razed and topsoil removed.

The United States seized on the latest IAEA resolution and the satellite photos' new revelations as further evidence that Iran is using its nuclear power program to mask a covert weapons program.

"No one could see in all this the behavior of a government trying to come clean to resolve doubts created by its two decades of clandestine nuclear developments," Kenneth Brill, the US ambassador to the IAEA said in a speech Friday to delegates of the agency's board of directors. "If Iran has a still-clandestine military program -- and in my government's view, it is dangerous to believe otherwise -- every passing day could bring it closer to producing the enriched uranium needed for nuclear bombs."

Going nuclear, of course, would cost Iran dearly. Tehran craves international respectability and badly needs increased trade and investment and would risk severe diplomatic ostracism, or worse, with such a move.

Iran rejects the US allegations and says its nuclear program is solely to generate electricity.

"We have no intention of using nuclear technology for military use," President Mohammad Khatami said in Tehran on Wednesday. "We will continue our cooperation with the agency in the framework of the law and our rights."

Officials say that among Iran's known facilities they are most troubled by an underground centrifuge enrichment plant in Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran, which Iran kept secret until an Iranian exile opposition group exposed it in August 2002.

Before enrichment work there was suspended and put under IAEA safeguards, a pilot plant at Natanz had approximately 200 centrifuges installed. A second large-scale plant at Natanz that is under construction could, at full capacity, house as many as 50,000 centrifuges and produce enough bomb-grade uranium for 15 to 20 nuclear weapons a year, according to some analysts.

Iran has also acquired a design for and begun research and development on the advanced P-2 centrifuge, which could enrich uranium faster than the older P-1 design used at Natanz.

As part of a deal with Germany, France, and Britain last fall, Iran agreed to voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment and subject its nuclear industry to stringent IAEA inspections.

Iran has insisted it has no intention of pulling out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but did announce yesterday that it was considering resuming activities related to uranium enrichment -- such as building parts for centrifuges -- in retaliation for the tough IAEA resolution.

What worries US officials and other diplomats here most are not the facilities they know about, but those that many suspect are still undeclared and hidden.

Serious allegations about Iran's nuclear program surfaced in August 2002, when the National Council for Resistance of Iran, an exile opposition group that the United States says is a terrorist organization, claimed that uranium enrichment experiments were being carried out at Natanz.

In February 2003, IAEA inspectors discovered highly enriched uranium there and at another site. Inspectors later discovered that Iran had also separated small amounts of plutonium, another pointer toward a potential weapons program.

Enriching uranium and separating plutonium are allowed under the nonproliferation treaty, as long as they are reported to the IAEA and open to agency safeguards and inspections to assure that they are for peaceful purposes. By covering up such activities, Iran caused many who had previously given the country the benefit of the doubt to suspect it was trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The United States has repeatedly demanded that Tehran be formally declared in violation of the nonproliferation treaty and hauled before the Security Council. The European allies, however, have been more cautious and have tried to entice Iran into greater transparency with offers of economic, trade, and technology concessions.

At successive IAEA meetings over the past year, the 35-member Board of Directors, which is composed of representatives of the agency's member states, has opted instead to sternly rebuke Iran repeatedly for its failure to fully cooperate with inspectors.

US officials say they want consensus before pushing hard to have the matter sent to the Security Council. But some officials worry that time could be running out.

On Friday, after the latest IAEA meeting on Iran concluded, agency director Mohamed ElBaradei indicated that the world was growing impatient with Iran. "By the end of the year, we will have been doing an inspection in Iran for two years," he said. "And I think that is long enough to provide the international community with assurances they urgently need."