Iran: Rumsfeld talking up the threat

knightridder: The State Department's top arms control official charged Friday that Iran is speeding up its efforts to master the process of enriching uranium on an industrial scale and may be close to surmounting all of the technological barriers.

"We are very close to that point of no return," said Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Enrichment is a process in which machines called centrifuges spin uranium hexafluoride gas at supersonic speeds into low enriched uranium for power plants and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, depending on the length of the process.

Joseph's comments coincided with the Pentagon's release of an interview transcript in which Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that he has no confidence in the current U.S. intelligence estimate that Iran is at least five years away from having a nuclear weapon.

... Rumsfeld, interviewed on Tuesday by conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, was asked if he had confidence in the current U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran is five to 10 years away from producing a nuclear weapon.

"No, I'm not confident," answered Rumsfeld, according to the transcript released on Friday. He added that U.S. intelligence agencies have had problems penetrating Iran.

"I think it's a very difficult target for our intelligence community," said Rumsfeld. "They work hard at it and they're fine people, but it's a difficult thing to do. Our visibility into their circumstance is imperfect." Read more