The US intelligence community believes that Iran is likely to decide to obtain a nuclear bomb if the United States attacks the uranium enrichment facility in Fordo or Israel kills Iran's supreme spiritual and political leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the New York Times reported.
According to U.S. intelligence agencies, “Iran has not yet decided to produce a nuclear bomb, although it has already amassed a large stockpile of the enriched uranium needed for that purpose,” the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The New York daily noted that “the question of whether Iran has decided to complete its work on an atomic bomb is irrelevant to many “hawks” in the U.S. and Iran, who say Tehran is within a whisker of becoming an existential threat to Israel.”
US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would make a decision on a possible attack on Iran within two weeks. CIA chief John Ratcliffe said that “Iran has everything it needs to obtain a nuclear weapon”. “All it needs now is a decision from the supreme leader. It would take the Iranians a few weeks to produce a nuclear weapon,” he added. Such a time horizon – the “NYT” noted – is consistent with the Mossad's assessment.
The newspaper also reported on the varying assessments among American officials. “Some officials believe that the Israeli estimates are credible, but others indicate that the assessment of the American intelligence community remains unchanged and that Iran needs from several months to even a year to produce the weapon,” it reads.
At the same time, “many intelligence officials believe that the reason Iran has stockpiled so much uranium is to have the ability to quickly produce a bomb.”
The NYT also stressed that there are suspicions in the US intelligence community that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been calling for an attack on Iran for many years, is presenting “embellished estimates to gain the support of the United States in the military campaign against (Tehran)”.
The daily recalled that Khamenei issued a fatwa (religious decree) in 2003, which prohibits the production of nuclear weapons. “At the moment, it is still in force,” noted a US intelligence official quoted by the “NYT.” (PAP)
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