"10 years away from nuclear bomb": report

OK, if this is true then we have a little bit of time to settle the issue once and for all with the Iranians. Assuming somebody somewhere stops the Bush administration from having their war in Iran, Bush will be long out of office before the Iranians become anything that approximates a real threat.

However, out intelligence gathering capabilities, from what I understand, have gone down the pooper in the last 20 years or so. Further to point, from what I've been reading, we can't get solid information out of the Middle East, especially Iran. We don't have nearly enough Arab/Persian operatives or even folks that speak Arab or Farsi. Sure the new report says 10 years but is it real or is it propaganda. They wouldn't be the first country to state they were X amount of years from the atomic bomb and then one fine day, poof, there it is in record time. I remain skeptical and watchful of our friends in the Persian Gulf.

And speaking of which, would the good people of Iran make with the street level rebellion already, times-a-wastin'.

Here's the story:

Iran is some 10 years away from manufacturing highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear device, The Washington Post said Tuesday quoting officials with access to a new intelligence review.

Ordered by the National Intelligence Council in January, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran doubles the amount of time the White House believes Iran is away from building a nuclear weapon from five years in the previous estimate in 2001, the daily said.

The estimate, designed to alert the US president to national security developments, said there were credible indicators that Iran's military was conducting clandestine work, but nothing to indicate they were related to a nuclear weapons probram, according to sources familiar with the report.

The report also expresses uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, although it agrees that, left to its own devices, Iran would pursue the nuclear weapons path.

On Iran's political future, the estimate is unsure whether Iran's ruling clerics would still be in power by the time the country is capable of producing fissile material.

The US administration keeps "hoping the mullahs will leave before Iran gets a nuclear weapons capability," said a US official familiar with the intelligence review.

Iran on Monday informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would soon resume uranium ore conversion, a move that risks plunging talks with the European Union into crisis and exposing Tehran to UN Security Council action.