Israel vs Iran: the regional blowback

The prospect of an Israeli military assault on Iran's nuclear assets is growing. The scale and impact of any attack would be far greater than most observers expect.

The pre-publication hype surrounding the new report on Iran's nuclear ambitions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicated that the conclusions would be definitive. In light of it, the document - released on 9 November 2011 - is rather cautious. It does claim that Iran has made sustained efforts to develop nuclear-warhead technology, though many of these occurred in the early 2000s and there is little hard evidence of what is happening now. It is the link between the weapons research and two other factors that makes the case for revisiting Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The first is the programme of uranium enrichment which is steadily accumulating stocks of lower-level reactor-grade uranium (about 4% enrichment) and a much smaller amount of research-reactor fuel (rated at 20%). Weapons-grade fissile material requires enrichment to well over 80%, but that could be within grasp; alongside the warhead work, this suggests Iran has made real progress towards a virtual bomb, even if it is still some way from being a nuclear power or even taking the final decision to become one. More