According those ever-loquacious unnamed ‘intelligence sources’, Iran could have a nuclear bomb within a year.

Speaking this time to The Times, the sources say Iran’s nuclear scientists are merely waiting on their country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to give the word.

“If the Supreme Leader takes the decision, we assess they have to enrich low-enriched uranium to highly-enriched uranium at the Natanz plant, which could take six months, depending on how many centrifuges are operating. We don’t know if the decision was made yet,” they told the Times.

After enrichment it would take another six months to assemble a warhead, says the paper.

Back in February this year the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran had produced around a tonne of low-enriched uranium. As Nature noted at the time, that’s enough for a bomb but only if you do some serious enriching.

An official assessment of Iran’s nuclear programme from the US National Intelligence Council has previously stated:

We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely. We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.

…

We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.

That council report suggests that Iran stopped its weapons programme in 2003 in response to international pressure. By contrast, the Times says Iran stopped work in 2003 because it had already worked out how to build a bomb and the rate limiting step was a lack of enriched uranium.

Bottom line: We thought Iran could produce a bomb if they really wanted too. We still do.

That said, if Mr/Mrs I. Sources are reading this do give me a call. I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say, anonymously and on the QT, of course…