Germany's Stern magazine has reported that the German Foreign Intelligence Service believes that Iran is only months away from being able to test a nuclear device:
Iran will soon be able to produce atomic bombs and to perform underground nuclear testing, just as North Korea has done, experts in the German Foreign Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) have told the weekly, Hamburg-based news magazine stern. "If they want to, they will be able to set off a uranium bomb within six months," a BND-expert is quoted in the latest edition of stern magazine to be published on Thursday.
Later, however, other officials with the BND walked back from this assessment:
But there appears to be conflicting reports from BND officials. A BND spokesman told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that "we are not talking about months, but years."
He said a six-month threshold is a "shortened" period that does not correspond with the BND's assessment of Teheran's atomic bomb program. The spokesman added that Iran could reach nuclear weapons capability within a "four-to-seven-year" period.
So what I'm gathering is that German intelligence believes that Iran will be capable of testing a crude device, as North Korea did twice, in six months, but will not have the capability to deliver a missile-mounted warhead for several years.
Despite the insistence of Iran to the contrary, there is a growing international consensus that Iran is seeking at least the capability to produce nuclear weapons:
Iran "definitely" wants "the technology that would enable it to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do so," ElBaradei (head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency) told the British Broadcasting Corp.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton want to resolve this threat to regional stability peacefully and diplomatically, but Clinton said today that we will not simply sit around and wait for Iran to come to the table:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today said the Iran’s chance to engage with the U.S. isn’t indefinite.
Scary times in a scary world. At least the adults are in charge in our country and McCain and Palin have little to no influence on anything other than upcoming SNL episodes.