Iran is still at least five years away from producing its first nuclear weapon, with the process more likely to take a decade or longer, a leading British think tank said.
The study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), titled "Iran's Strategic Weapons Programmes -- A Net Assessment", was due to be formally launched later Tuesday.
Ahead of its publication, Gary Samore from the IISS said that Iran seemed convinced it needed to keep open the option of a nuclear weapons capability, despite mounting international pressure.
Iran is still at least five years away from producing its first nuclear weapon, with the process more likely to take a decade or longer, a leading British think tank said.
The study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), titled "Iran's Strategic Weapons Programmes -- A Net Assessment", was due to be formally launched later Tuesday.
Ahead of its publication, Gary Samore from the IISS said that Iran seemed convinced it needed to keep open the option of a nuclear weapons capability, despite mounting international pressure.
"When I talk to Iranians, there seems to be a consensus that Iran needs to have a latent nuclear weapon capability, in other words an option," Samore, the think tank's senior non-proliferation expert, told BBC Radio.
"But there seems to be less agreement over whether it makes sense for Iran to actually produce a nuclear weapon."
Away from politics, Iran also faced "a number of obstacles" on the technical side before it could produce enough weapons-grade nuclear material.
"If everything goes right, if they throw all their efforts into solving these problems, they might be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon within five years," he predicted.
"It is more likely that Iran will try more gradually to accumulate a production capacity over a much longer period of time, 10 or 15 years, before it makes a decision over whether it wants to produce a nuclear weapon."
Iran faces the threat of being referred to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear programme, which the country's government insists is a peaceful effort to generate electricity
On Friday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, issued a tough report on Iran's failure to meet demands for cessation of all nuclear fuel activities.
Tehran has defied stiff pressure from the United States and Europe by resuming uranium conversion, a precursor to the enrichment of the material, something which can make reactor fuel but can also be used for military purposes.
It remained unclear whether Tehran was convinced of the need to produce a nuclear weapon, Samore said.
"The decision about whether to actually build a nuclear weapon is something that, I think, is put off for the time being."
According to a BBC Internet site report, the IISS study also covers Iran's potential chemical and biological weapons programmes, as well as its long-range missile programme, where the IISS said there had been considerable advances in recent years.
Iran appears to be focusing on its Shahab-3 system, a variant of a North Korean missile capable of hitting targets in Israel, much of Turkey and southern Russia, the BBC cited the report as saying.
