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Iranian Nuke Boomer: T - 6 Months (per Israelis)
IRAN may be as little as six months away from completing the know-how to build a nuclear bomb, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said today."The question is not if they are going to hold that bomb in 2009 or 2010 or 2011, the question is when they will have the full knowledge," Shalom told a meeting of US Jewish community leaders in New York. "According to our people, security and intelligence, they are very, very close. It may be only six months before they will have that full knowledge." The authoritative, independent International Institute for Strategic Studies said this month Tehran is at least five years away from producing enough fissile material for a single bomb, and that 15 years was a more likely time frame. Shalom did not say when he expected Iran to have the material to make a bomb. He was speaking as the board of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was meeting in Vienna to consider whether to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions over its secretive nuclear program. Iran insists its nuclear program is purely civilian to make electricity. The United States and Europe suspect Tehran of seeking a weapons capability. Israel is widely assumed to have a sizeable arsenal of nuclear weapons, although it does not publicly acknowledge that and maintains a policy of ambiguity. Shalom warned that if the IAEA hesitated in reporting Iran to the Security Council, it would be very difficult to do so in future, and it might be too late as the Iranians were pushing ahead with their nuclear research. Posted by: Captain America 2005-09-20 |
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