By Bronwen Maddox
HOW close is Iran to getting the bomb, and what happens if it does? Most technical estimates, by British and US intelligence and by think-tanks, reckon that it would take Iran between two and ten years to obtain enough material to make a bomb, once it had mastered the technique of uranium enrichment.
The difference in the estimates represents the scale of its enrichment programme (which Iran insists is designed purely for reactors). A “research-scale” programme would take many years to build up stocks of uranium enriched to weapons grade. A large-scale “industrial” enterprise could do it in a fifth of the time or less.
But that is not the most important deadline for those monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme.
Those estimates — however worrying they might seem — give a false sense of comfort.
Intelligence analysts say that they worry most about the much shorter time it will take Iran simply to master the technique of enrichment.
Once it has reached that point, it will eventually be able to make weapons-grade material by repeating the process enough times.
Israel, which has made this case particularly loudly, calls this moment of technical proficiency “the point of no return”.
We know that Iran is not there yet. Two and a half years ago, when it stopped work in agreement with Britain, France and Germany, it had not managed to get “cascades” of centrifuges working to enrich uranium in its pilot plant.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the London-based think-tank, points out that during the suspension that equipment will have corroded, and will have to be repaired.
John Negroponte, the US National Intelligence Director, told Congress yesterday that Iran probably did not have nuclear weapons yet, nor had it obtained the material central to producing them.
All the same, if Iran were to restart work on perfecting the cascades it might manage to get them working within a year. Israeli estimates suggest an even shorter time.
This is why Iran has been so insistent on keeping even a tiny “research” capability. The scale might be small, but it would still allow it to keep moving towards this critical point.
So far, the European negotiations have bought time. The hope is that a mixture of threats and incentives can buy more delay — even, possibly, until Iran’s young population picks a regime that is friendlier to the West. But if Iran does haul itself to the point where it can make nuclear weapons, despite this frenetic diplomatic effort, what are the implications? None is attractive. Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, has speculated that if Iran got the bomb it might provoke an arms race in the region. Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt have all refrained from nuclear weapons programmes.
In the most extreme case, Turkey and Greece might even be prompted to follow suit, British officials suggest.
Meanwhile, an Iranian bomb would enormously heighten the sense of menace in its hostility towards Israel. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already said that he thinks Israel should be “wiped off the map”.
For Iran, that is the most damaging statement he has made. It seems unlikely that the new round of pressure on Iran would have reached such intensity if he had not said it.
That is the bleakest view. Others are more optimistic. Some argue that Iran, in so many ways more stable than Pakistan, would handle ownership of a bomb calmly, and that it might even show more sense of responsibility, as a regional power, for keeping the peace.
On this benign view, Iran would see it as in its interest to encourage stability in its neighbours — as, up to a point, it has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps. But it is hard to be sanguine, given that Iran is led by a president who has seemed on a mission to provoke.
