Iran is now "the biggest threat to the US", officials have said The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) set to release its most detailed intelligence yet on research in Iran seen as geared to developing atomic bombs. Iranian officials have already seen the Vienna-based IAEA's intelligence to be released to the UN this week, diplomats told AFP news agency.
In a report on its website, the Washington Post newspaper quoted Western officials as saying that the new information reinforced concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 when, according to US intelligence agencies, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.
The report by the UN nuclear watchdog is expected to reveal links to nuclear experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to “the threshold of nuclear capability,” the Post reported.
In the run-up to the report's release, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, said the military option to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons was nearer.
Experts say Israel will launch a strike if it is convinced that the West is not going to take stronger steps against nuclear Iran.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes. Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister, said in comments published in Iran on Sunday that it was based on "counterfeit" claims.
And in comments carried by an Egyptian newspaper on Monday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said that the US fears Iran's growing military power because it is now able to compete with Israel and the West.
"Yes, we have military capabilities that are different from any other country in the region," Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar cited Ahmadinejad as saying.
"Iran is increasing in capability and advancement and therefore we are able to compete with Israel and the West and especially the United States.
"The US fears Iran's capability. Iran will not permit [anyone from making] a move against it."
“The report is not going to include some sort of ‘smoking gun’,” one Western diplomat told AFP. “But it will be an extensive body of evidence that will be very hard for Iran to refute as forgery, as they have done in the past.”
Russia however said that a possible military strike against Iran would only lead to further conflict and civilian casualties.
"It would be a very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences," Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said on Monday.
However, reports have suggested that former Soviet scientists helped Tehran develop detonators for a nuclear chain reaction.
Citing anonymous Western diplomats and nuclear experts familiar with new intelligence to be released to the United Nations, the Post also said a former Soviet weapons scientist had allegedly tutored Iranians on building “high-precision detonators” that can be used to “trigger a nuclear chain reaction.”
The newspaper noted that a key breakthrough that had not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as a R265 generator.
The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell that is lined with pellets of high explosives and electrically wired so the detonations occur in split-second precision, the report said. The explosions compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, the paper said.
According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, the paper said.
Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, said The Post, citing two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.
Iran's rulers deny accusations that they are seeking nuclear weapons and have warned they will respond to any attacks by striking at Israel and US interests in the Arabian Gulf.
A senior US military official said on Friday Iran had become the biggest threat to the US.
In his interview to al-Akhbar, Ahmadinejad repeated that Iran does not own a nuclear bomb, but said Israel's end was inevitable.
"It is Israel that has about 300 nuclear warheads. Iran is only keen to have nuclear capability for peaceful means," he said, accusing the US of lumping Iran with Syria, Hamas (which rules the Gaza Strip) and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The US portrays those four as "the Axis of Evil to save the Zionist entity (Israel). But the Zionists are bound to go out of existence", Ahmadinejad said.