London - Iran could be able to produce between 20 and 25 kilos of highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by 2010, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London said Wednesday.
'The IISS estimate of 2010 remains valid,' the institute said in its report The Military Balance 2006 published Wednesday.
Other estimates of an Iranian nuclear weapons capacity by 2009, or even 2008, were 'within the margin of error, given the number of unknowns', the report said.
It stressed that the limited access of the IAEA nuclear watchdog to Iran's facilities required policymakers 'to rely on worst-case assumptions about Iran's progress toward the bomb.'
In the judgement of the IISS there is a growing consensus that an Iranian nuclear capacity is 'both almost inevitable, and certainly bad.'
In the absence of an effective strategy to prevent that outcome, a 'hedging strategy of containment might theoretically offer itself,' said the IISS report.
Greater US involvement in the region, at the invitation of Gulf Arab states, could create a debate within the Iranian regime as to whether its security interests were served by continuing to ignore international concern, the report suggests.
There was, however, no doubt that the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran would dramatically alter the regional balance of power and 'inspire all sorts of potential diplomatic shifts.'
Changing the cost-benefit analysis in Tehran, preventing a nuclear outcome, and controlling its consequences if it takes place will 'present the most difficult and classic strategic challenge in the months and years ahead.'
