Blog : Sérum de Liberté

US intelligence chief Dennis Blair warned Tuesday it would be "difficult" to convince Iran to give up its suspected quest for nuclear weapons through diplomatic means, Agence France Presse reported.

Teheran might acquiesce to keep its nuclear ambitions in check if it is presented with a blend of "credible" incentives and "threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures," but "it is difficult to specify what such a combination might be," Blair told lawmakers.

Blair (photo) was speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee as US President Barack Obama wrestled with how to convince the Islamic republic to halt what the West views as a secret nuclear weapons drive.

Iran denies the allegations, claiming it needs atomic power to generate electricity for civilian use.
"Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Teheran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them," said Blair.

"We assess convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult, given the linkage many within the leadership see between nuclear weapons and Iran's key national security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran's considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons," he warned.

US intelligence agencies estimated last year that Iran halted its nuclear weapons design and weaponization activities in late 2003 and that Teheran had not resumed them as of mid-2007, Blair said.

Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said that Iran has only low-enriched uranium - which would need to be refined into highly enriched uranium before it can fuel a warhead. Neither officials said there were indications that refining has occurred, but Blair expressed concerns over Iran's intentions.

"Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon" because of difficulties in acquiring or producing the fissile material necessary, but could obtain enough as early as 2010, he said.

Their comments seem to dispute a claim made Sunday by OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who said Iran had crossed a technical threshold and that its attainment of nuclear military capability was now a matter of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy."

Yadlin's claim runs counter to estimates by US intelligence that the earliest Iran could produce a weapon is 2010, with some analysts saying it was more likely that it was 2015.

Maples said the United States and Israel were interpreting the same facts, but arriving at different conclusions.

"The Israelis are far more concerned about it," Maples said.

But in an apparent caveat to the intelligence assessments, Blair said American agencies cannot "rule out that Iran has acquired from abroad or will acquire in the future a nuclear weapon or enough fissile material for a weapon."

Iran will probably be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb at some point in the 2010-2015 timeframe, although the State Department's intelligence service sets the early date at 2013 "because of foreseeable technical and programmatic problems," he said.