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April 25, 2003/Nisan 23 5763, Vol. 55, No. 35
Leaders weigh gravity of Iranian threat
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - On the face of it, the American military victory in Iraq has significantly enhanced Israel's national security, removing a threat from weapons of mass destruction and opening new chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But there is a downside: Israeli leaders are concerned that Iran could emerge strengthened from Iraq's defeat and continue to promote terror while developing nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to Israel's very existence.
One worry is that the defeat of Iraq could lead to a fundamentalist backlash in the region spearheaded by Iran, using its close ties with Syria and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah to wage a campaign of terror.
Another is that Shi'ite Iran could build close ties with a new Shi'ite-dominated Iraq, projecting fundamentalist influence across the region.
But of most concern by far is that, according to some Western experts, Iran is barely two years away from producing a nuclear bomb.
Israeli officials maintain that the two prongs of the Iranian threat - nuclear weapons and terrorism - are related. Ra'anan Gissin, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, declares that Iran uses terror to "create deterrence as it builds a nuclear weapons capability that has not yet become operational."
In other words, the threat of Iranian-inspired terror is intended to make the United States or other would-be aggressors think twice before taking military action to stop Iran's nuclear program.
Over the past few months, Sharon has been urging visiting U.S. legislators and administration officials to take action to stop Iran from going nuclear. The message seemed to be getting through: After mid-March meetings in Jerusalem, U.S. Under- secretary of State John Bolton announced at an Israeli-American strategic forum in Washington that "the U.S. will focus on stopping Iran getting nuclear weapons."
But it could be too late.
Over the past few years, undetected by the world's most vaunted intelligence agencies and the United Nations' watchdog Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency, Iran developed two sites capable of producing the fissile materials from which nuclear bombs are made.
One, near the desert town of Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran, will be able to produce weapons-grade uranium. The other, farther west at Arak, will be able to make plutonium from heavy water.
The tip-off on the two sites came last August from an Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance. Until then, the Iranians had claimed that the Natanz site was for "desert irrigation."
Satellite pictures, released in December by the American Institute for Science and International Security, pro- ved otherwise. Mohammed Baradei, an Egyptian who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited the Natanz site in late February.
Baradei's Iranian hosts acknowledged that by 2005, they planned to have 5,000 centrifuges fully operational at the desert site. Experts say that would enable Iran to produce enough enriched uranium for at least two nuclear bombs a year from 2005 onward.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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