The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.
President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to "destroy people," including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.
A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime.
If U.S. forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian officials say Tehran will respond by triggering all-out regional war. "Ballistic missiles would be fired in masses against targets in Arab gulf states and Israel," one Foreign Ministry official said. "The objective would be to overwhelm U.S. missile defense systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets."
Iran's program appears to be stirring interest that some fear will lead to a scramble for atomic weapons in the volatile region.
Bush administration officials reacted cautiously Tuesday to indications that Iran has improved its ability to enrich uranium as fuel for nuclear reactors, a crucial step toward nuclear weapons.
Iran is making "slow but steady" progress in its efforts to enrich uranium, but probably still will not have enough fuel for a single nuclear warhead until 2009 at the earliest, a former U.N. inspector said Tuesday.
Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium in the past two months but remains far from the technological know-how the Bush administration fears and the capabilities that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently claimed, according to an official letter written by a senior U.N. nuclear inspector yesterday.
Roughly a dozen states in the Middle East have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. United States government and private analysts say they believe that the rush of activity is also intended to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Iran's announcement that it launched a research rocket has called new attention to a space program that Tehran says is peaceful but which some fear aims to produce long-range ballistic missiles that could reach Europe or the United States. Exactly what Iran launched, or even what it aimed to do, remains the subject of debate, speculation and possible misinterpretation.