FOR THE past two years, western intelligence agencies have largely been in agreement that Iran is pursuing acquisition of a nuclear weapon, rejecting claims that it is peacefully seeking atomic power. But where western governments have disagreed for some time is over a central feature of the Iranian programme: its attempts to design a nuclear warhead.
Iran is clearly making progress on two aspects of its programme. It is pressing ahead with uranium enrichment and has enough nuclear material to form the basis for at least one bomb, if further enriched. It is also making progress in developing ballistic missile technology, at least for short- and medium- range missiles.
However, disagreements between western agencies over the design of a nuclear warhead have been severe. The US maintains the position set out in a 2007 national intelligence estimate on Iran. This judged “with high confidence” that Iran halted weaponisation in 2003 and with “moderate confidence” that it had not resumed it as of 2007.
Others have clearly had doubts about the claim. Israel has long believed that weaponisation resumed in 2005 after a direct order from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Financial Times has learnt that British intelligence services have come to the same view: that Ayatollah Khamenei’s halt order in 2003 was removed “in late 2004 or early 2005”.
A US official acknowledged that Washington was more cautious in judging that Iran had restarted specific nuclear weapons work than were its main European allies. This is partly because US intelligence agencies are still scarred by their past errors in assessing whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “There are differing views on whether weaponisation activities have resumed,” he said. However, he acknowledged that “in terms of whether they had a weaponisation programme in the past there’s pretty broad support for that assessment”.
David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, says that Germany’s intelligence services have concluded that Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme was probably active as recently as 2007, based on factors such as Iran’s pattern of related procurements, specific purchases and the nature of its work on its missile programme in recent years.
He cites a German court case of an alleged arms trafficker in which the BND, the German intelligence service, gave testimony contradicting the US finding that Iran’s weaponisation efforts were no longer active after 2003. The case has not yet been resolved.
“Governments have a responsibility to warn their publics better about what is their evidence on nuclear weaponisation,” says Mr Albright, who criticises the US for claiming knowledge it lacked over Iraq, and for misrepresenting the tentative conclusions of the 2007 national intelligence estimate.
He adds, of the US and its European allies: “I find that they share a lot less intelligence than you might think for close allies, although Britain is something of an exception.” A common British, French and German report to the multi-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group in May said that, in the worst case, Iran could have a nuclear weapons capability in 12 months. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)