MEIR Dagan, the outgoing head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, has predicted that Iran will not be able to acquire a nuclear bomb until 2015 at the earliest.
This date is significantly different from earlier, more pessimistic, Israeli assessments. When Mr Dagan took over as Mossad chief in 2002, Israeli officials were warning that Teheran would cross the nuclear threshold in 2007. Over the last few years the Israeli assessment was that Iran was a maximum of two years away from a nuclear bomb.
Briefing the Knesset parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee for the last time as Mossad chief, Mr Dagan, who stepped down this week, cited a “series of setbacks and failures” that had set Iran’s drive to acquire a nuclear potential back by several years.
Stopping Iran going nuclear was Mr Dagan’s top priority during his eight-year tenure as head of the highly respected Israeli spy agency.
Not surprisingly Israel did not take credit for any of the “setbacks” experienced by Iran. But all of the following events over recent years were blamed by Teheran on Israel: the disappearance and murder of Iranian nuclear scientists; the crash of planes carrying cargo for the nuclear project; fires at Iranian nuclear labs; damage to imported equipment, and, most significantly, the havoc caused by the Stuxnet computer worm.
Although Israeli officials stressed that “all options were on the table” when it came to stopping Iran acquiring the bomb, Mr Dagan made it clear that in his opinion Israel should only embark on a military option if Jerusalem felt “a dagger was at its throat.” His latest assessment on the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme was a clear message that the dagger was not yet at Israel’s throat.
In a separate development, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton rejected Iran’s offer for EU officials to tour its nuclear facilities.
Earlier this week Teheran invited Russia, China, the European Union and Arab and other allies to tour its nuclear sites ahead of the next meeting between Iran and the six world powers to discuss its nuclear programme.
However, Baroness Ashton, speaking during a visit to Hungary, said it was not the EU’s job to inspect nuclear sites. “The role of the inspections of nuclear sites is for the International Atomic Energy Agency and I do hope Iran will insure that the IAEA is able to go and continue its work.”