Top US
intelligence officials assert that Iran has the means to build a nuclear
weapon, but has not yet decided to follow through, in contrast to
Israel’s insistence that time is running out to stop Iran from
developing such a weapon.
But Iran is likely to strike out at US
interests if it feels threatened, Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper on Tuesday told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an
annual report to Congress on threats facing America.
Citing
last year’s thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the
US, “some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei … are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United
States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the
regime,” Clapper said.
Iran has the technical ability to build a
nuclear weapon, Clapper said. But he, CIA director David Petraeus and
others reasserted their stance that Iran was not building nuclear
weapons, in subtle contrast to Israeli officials’ statements that Iran
could have nuclear capability within a year.
There was
“dissension and debate in the political hierarchy of Iran” over whether
to build a weapon, Clapper said. Iranian political officials were
weighing the regional prestige of possessing a weapon against the cost
of further international sanctions and the risk of retaliatory military
action by Israel or the West.
Petraeus
said the latest round of sanctions against the regime was beginning to
bite, with a run on Iranian banks in recent weeks. However, he conceded
that the “clock is ticking” as Iran moves ahead enriching uranium to a
grade that’s below weapons-ready, but higher than normal for regular
industrial use.
Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said in an
interview aired this week that the Iranians could build a bomb quickly.
“If they
decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to
produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to
put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort,” Panetta said on Sunday on
CBS television’s 60 Minutes.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said
last week that Iran was proceeding toward nuclear weapons capability and
time was “urgently running out.”
Petraeus said he met the head
of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, last week to discuss Israel’s
concerns.
While he said Israel sees the threat of an
Iranian nuclear weapon as “an existential threat to their country”, he
did not say whether Israel agreed with the US assessment that Iran had
not yet decided to make a nuclear weapon.
Senate
Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein called 2012 “a
critical year for convincing or preventing Iran from developing a
nuclear weapon”.
Other threats faced by the US include
terrorists, criminals and foreign powers who might try to strike via
nuclear weapons or cyberspace, Clapper and the others said.
Al-Qaeda
is far weaker since Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan last year.
Petraeus pointed out that “four of the top 20 in a single week were
captured or killed” last year, and Clapper said the group was likely to
resort to “smaller, simpler attacks” as its ranks are thinned by
continued pressure from US drone strikes and special operations raids.
The
intelligence chiefs predicted al-Qaeda’s regional affiliates, such as
Yemen’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, would try to pick up the
slack for the beleaguered core group in Pakistan.
The US
continues to put pressure on the Yemeni offshoot. On Monday the US
mounted air strikes targeting al-Qaeda leaders there, killing at least
four suspected militants, according to Yemeni and military officials.
Just
below Iran and al-Qaeda on the list of threats comes the possibility of
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, from chemical and
biological to nuclear and radiological. The intelligence community does
not believe states that possess them have supplied them to terror
groups, but that remains a risk, Clapper said.
