Don’t Bomb Iran

summary: IN August 2005, the IDF revised its esitmate for first Iranian nuke from 2007 to “not earlier than 2008″. IDF revised its extimate for first Iranian uranium enrichment from earlier estimates of mid-2005 to first half of 2006.
New estimates on Iranian nukes
Orly Halpern, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 1, 2005
Israel has adjusted its estimates of when it believes Iran will have
nuclear bombs due to the belief that that Iran no longer runs
independent military and civilian nuclear development programs.
According to the new estimates, Iran will probably have a nuclear
bomb by 2012, but could have the capability as early as 2008 “if all
goes well for it,” a high ranking IDF commander told The Jerusalem
Post yesterday.
“We no longer think that a secret military track runs independent of the
civilian one,” said the officer in an interview at IDF Headquarters in
Tel-Aviv. “If it were then they could acquire weapons in 2007… We
have changed our estimation. Now we think the military track is
dependent on the civilian one. However, from a certain point it will be
able to run independently. But not earlier than 2008.”
Iran has been developing nuclear capacity which, it says, is only for
peaceful civilian purposes allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. But many countries fear that Iran is secretly developing nuclear
military capacity as well.
Last January IDF Intelligence Branch chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze’evi
Farkash said in a lecture at the University of Haifa’s National Security
Studies Center that if Teheran did not stop its uranium enrichment
activities, it would develop its first atomic weapon between 2007 and
2009. He also said that Iran was six months away from enriching
uranium required to build a nuclear bomb, a step that has been
described as the “point of no return.”
That date passed last month and Israel does not believe that Iran has
yet achieved the enrichment milestone. The source now believes the
“point of no return” could occur within a few months to a year.
What most concerns Israel right now is the possibility of a nuclear-
armed Iran in 2008, especially given that the US is more concerned
with the later possible date of 2012.
In November Iran voluntarily ceased its uranium enrichment program
as as part of talks with France, Germany and Britain regarding its
nuclear development program. Iran is threatening to renew its uranium
enrichment process.