WarSclerotic

U.S. officials believe Iran will be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within four months, according to a report by French news agency AFP on Wednesday. The report says that despite setbacks from cyberattacks like the Stuxnet attack in 2009, Iran has quickened its pace of uranium enrichment.

High-level nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers in Moscow fizzled on Tuesday, creating an increased opportunity for Israel to use the setback to argue that military force is the only way to stop Tehran from developing atomic arms.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton announced an indefinite pause in negotiations and said talks could resume only if a low-level July 3 meeting of technical experts in Istanbul found enough common ground to warrant such a step.

Officials from Western nations involved in the talks acknowledged huge differences between the two sides, but insisted the diplomatic track had not been derailed. But the lack of progress in Moscow is sure to be seen by critics as a sign that talks have been ineffective in persuading Tehran to curb uranium enrichment, a process that can make both reactor fuel and the core of nuclear warheads.

Strong comments by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France, one of the countries at the table in Moscow, reflected Western frustration. He spoke of “the large gap between the two sides,” and warned that “sanctions will continue to be toughened” to pressure Tehran into a nuclear compromise.

Iran says it is not interested in nuclear weapons. But Israel says Iran is stretching out the talks to move closer to the ability to make them, and it has threatened to attack the Islamic Republic as a last resort. Israel may argue that the negotiations are turning into “talks about talks,” something the U.S. and its allies have vowed they will not tolerate.

Speaking to the Washington Post on Wednesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed doubts that the current round of negotiations would convince the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program.

“We hope that we’ll wake up and there will be an agreement to end the Iranian nuclear weapons program. But we are too realistic,” Barak said. “Sanctions are working better than in the past; diplomacy is more determined. But if I have to ask myself whether this will convince the ayatollahs to sit around the table and decide that the time has come to put an end to the military nuclear program, I don’t think that’s the case. They still feel there is room for maneuver. There is still a need both to ratchet up the sanctions and to heighten significantly the demands on the Iranians that would put an end to enrichment, would take all the enriched uranium out of the country, and would close and dismantle the installation at Fordo.”

AFP quoted Stephen Rademaker of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington as saying that based on an analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency, “It’s clear that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon very quickly should it wish to do so.”

The agency estimates that Iran has so far produced 3345 kilograms (7376 lbs.) of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent. Further enrichment of the uranium could provide enough for at least two atomic bombs, AFP quoted Rademaker as telling an armed services committee. If Iran’s leaders decided to cross the line of manufacturing nuclear weapons, “it would take them 35 to 106 days to actually have the fissile material for a weapon,” Rademaker reportedly said.

Rademaker reportedly said, “More than 9,000 Iranian centrifuges are churning out 158 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched uranium a month, three times the production rate compared to mid-2009, when the Stuxnet virus struck the program. So Stuxnet may have set them back, but not by very much, at least not sufficiently.”

The report also quoted David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, as saying, “It would take Iran at least four months in order to have sufficient weapon-grade uranium … for a nuclear explosive device.”