OT: CIA says Iran may now be able to make a nuclear bomb

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Monday January 17 12:02 PM ET

Report: U.S. Cannot Rule Out Iranian A-Bomb

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The CIA has told the White House that it can no longer rule out the possibility that Iran is now able to make a nuclear weapon, The New York Times reported Monday.

The Times reported that the new assessment was a sharp departure from earlier evaluations and was not based on information showing Iranian progress in building a bomb but on decreasing U.S. certainty that it was able to effectively monitor Iran's progress in making a nuclear weapon.

Rather than developing the technology and creating nuclear materials needed to build a bomb, Iran appeared to be trying to acquire the knowledge and materials on the black market, primarily from former Soviet republics, the officials told the Times.

The CIA has difficulty tracking those black market transactions and thus is hedging its analyses of Iran's progress.

Washington has worked to weaken ties between Iran and Russia, but has made little headway.

Because of the uncertainty, officials were considering ordering a National Intelligence Estimate to assess Tehran's nuclear capacity, to which all agencies in the intelligence community would contribute, the Times reported.

Russia, which has large stockpiles of nuclear fuel and weapons, has been known to sell nuclear and missile technology to Iran, and helped with its atomic energy program.

There is fear that Russia may be expanding that trade to include heavy water and graphite technology. Those concerns led the Clinton administration to impose sanctions on two Russian scientific institutions.

Iran has denied that it was cooperating with the controversial institutions to develop missiles and nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran denies having a nuclear weapons program at all and insists that it has been a member in good standing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty since 1970. The pact bars states without nuclear weapons from acquiring them.

Russia has denied helping Iran develop nuclear weapons.

While there is disagreement over what Iran has acquired, there is widespread agreement that Tehran would like to build a nuclear bomb.

David Albright, a nuclear analyst based in Washington, told the Times that Iran was likely seeking a nuclear weapon as part of an arms race with its rival, Iraq. ``Iran has made it clear that it will not be the last major country in the region to develop nuclear weapons,'' he said.

-- E=mc2 (@ .), January 19, 2000

Answers

We'd better hope they put a Chinese embassy near all of their bomb making factories, huh?

Remind me, when did this become a politics forum? It's been so long that I forget.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 19, 2000.


I don't think the CIA has any idea what weapons are being sold on the Russian black market and to whom.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

What suprises me is that a gov't CAN'T make an atomic bomb. The knowledge to make some sort of fission bomb has been around for FIFTY YEARS! The general knowledge for this must be out in the scientific community by now. With all the foreign college students in the U.S., some patriotic and talented foreign student should be able to use this info.

Is it really the case that a government today can't buy materials that were available in the U.S. 50 years ago? After all, they don't have to *invent* the process, they just need to copy what someone else has already done.

It really seems hard to believe that someone who really wanted to and had *lots* of cash and the legal right to do so (as in a gov't) couldn't come up with *something*. (Again, I'm not saying they could duplicate our current top-o-the-line, but how about something we made in the 50's or 60's?)

If I'm missing the boat please enlighten me,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.com), January 19, 2000.


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