2004 A study by the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology concluded in March found that "some of
John Bolton's criticisms were not supported by an analysis of the facts (for example, much of the gas flared off by Iran is not recoverable for energy use), but that Iran's decision to adopt the nuclear power option could not entirely be explained by the economics of energy production."
2005 In March,
The New York Times reported that a bipartisan Congressional inquiry concluded that the United States had inadequate intelligence to reach any conclusions on the state of Iran's nuclear program. In March 2009, the US Director of National Intelligence and Defense Intelligence Agency Director both testified before Congress that Iran did not have highly enriched uranium for bomb-making and had not made the decision to produce any, and also that Iran's missile program was not related to its nuclear program. Much of the debate about the 'Iranian nuclear threat' is therefore driven by concern that Iran's mastery of civilian technology could provide it the means to rapidly develop a weapons capability should Iran wish to do so in the future.
2006 The Economist magazine opined that "even before the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran was negotiating in bad faith. During this period, European officials believe, it continued to work in secret on nuclear research, having promised to suspend uranium enrichment." The Iranians attributed the concealment of portions of their nuclear program to the fact that the US hampered their overt attempts at acquiring the necessary technology for their program, and also point out that they promised to suspend enrichment rather than cease all research. After about two years, Iran ceased its voluntary and temporary suspension of enrichment after receiving a "very insulting and humiliating" offer which some analysts described as an "empty box". In response, the West rejected an Iranian offer for a nuclear consortium in Iran and said they would go to the Security Council for sanctions. Iran says its voluntary confidence building measures were only "reciprocated by broken promises and expanded requests" and that the EU3 "simply wanted prolonged and fruitless negotiations" to inhibit Iran from exercising its inalienable right to peaceful nuclear technology. In June, German Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung suggested that Iran would be able to operate its enrichment program for civilian purposes, as long as there was close monitoring by the IAEA to ensure that Iran did not develop nuclear weapons. He said that "one cannot forbid Iran from doing what other countries in the world are doing in accordance with international law" but that the "key point is whether a step towards nuclear weapons is taken. This cannot happen." Later, the Europeans reportedly also considered a compromise proposal where Iran would be allowed to continue spinning its centrifuges but would not feed any processed uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into the machines during the course of negotiations. The suggestion was reportedly shot down by the US, and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control reportedly told ElBaradei: "We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that will undermine us." On 31 July, the Security Council passed a resolution demanding that Iran stop "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities". (Reprocessing involves chemically separating plutonium from other nuclear waste products, a procedure that can lead to production of bomb-grade fuel.) A month later, an IAEA report indicated that "there are no indications of ongoing reprocessing activities in Iran," but that other elements of nuclear activity and the use of centrifuges had continued or resumed. The IAEA also said that Iran did not submit a timetable to the IAEA to resolve its nuclear program, as Iran had promised. The report also said that construction of the heavy water research reactor at Arak had continued.
2007 President Bush said that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons could trigger "World War III", while in 2007 Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns warned that Iran may be seeking a nuclear weapons capability. In June, IAEA director Mohammad ElBaradei suggested that Iran should be allowed limited uranium enrichment under strict supervision of the IAEA. His remarks were formally criticised by Nicholas Burns, the US Under-Secretary of State, who said: "We are not going to agree to accept limited enrichment." ElBaradei later criticized the US position and said, "I have seen the Iranians ready to accept putting a cap on their enrichment [program] in terms of tens of centrifuges, and then in terms of hundreds of centrifuges. But nobody even tried to engage them on these offers. Now Iran has 5,000 centrifuges. The line was, 'Iran will buckle under pressure.' But this issue has become so ingrained in the Iranian soul as a matter of national pride." In September, Undersecretary of State
Nicholas Burns called for the UN Security Council members and U.S. allies to help push for a third round of sanctions against Iran over the nuclear program. Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner said that although the international community is focused on diplomacy, the international community should prepare for the possibility of war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. In the same month, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, while discussing penalties that Europe might impose on Iran, said that they could be "economic sanctions regarding financial movements... Our German friends proposed this. We discussed it a few days ago. The international community's demand is simple: They must stop enriching uranium. Our Iranian friends want to create, they say, civilian nuclear energy. They have the right to that, but all that they are doing proves the contrary. That is why we are worried." In November, President Bush said that Iran has a sovereign right to
civilian nuclear technology, but expressed concern that the enrichment process could lead to a nuclear weapon. Bush also expressed concerns over Iranian leaders' threats against Israel, and said that all options, including a military option, were "on the table" in regards to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Tensions were raised by media reports of an Israeli air incursion over northeastern Syria on 6 September 2007. One U.S. official said the attack hit weapons heading for the Lebanese militant group
Hezbollah, an ally of Syria and Iran, but there also has been speculation the Israelis hit a nascent nuclear facility or were studying routes for a possible future strike on Iran. Others suspect Israel was performing an intelligence operation for the U.S.
2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) In December, the U.S. NIE (representing the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies) "judged with high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, with "moderate confidence" that the program remains frozen, and with "moderate-to-high confidence" that Iran is "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons". The estimate said that the enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade but that intelligence agencies "do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons" at some future date. Senator
Harry Reid, the
majority leader of the Senate in 2008, said he hoped the administration would "appropriately adjust its rhetoric and policy". The conclusion that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in 2003 was reportedly mainly based on the contents of a laptop computer that was allegedly stolen from Iran and provided to US intelligence agencies by dissidents. The Russians dismissed this conclusion, stating that they had not seen evidence that Iran had ever pursued a nuclear weapons program. The 2007 NIE report, contradicted the previous 2005 NIE conclusion which asserted that Iran had an active and on-going nuclear weapons program in 2005. According to a senior administration official, in a January 2008 conversation with
Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, Israeli and other foreign officials asked President Bush to explain the 2007 NIE. Bush "told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that (the NIE's) conclusions don't reflect his own views". After Bush seemed to distance himself from the report, the White House later said Bush endorses the "full scope" of the US intelligence findings on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, the Director of the IAEA, noted in particular that the NIE's conclusions corresponded with the IAEA's consistent statements that it had "no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran". In February 2009, testifying before the U.S. Senate, Director of National Intelligence
Dennis Blair said, "although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them." He said Iran was unlikely to achieve a nuclear weapon before 2013 because of foreseeable technical and programmatic problems, and that this would be in the case that it decided to do so. In 2009, the
Wall Street Journal reported that Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003, contradicting the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. A special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court cited a May 2008 BND report which says that the BND "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003." The judges also said that the BND supplemented these findings in 2008, showing "the similarities between Iran's acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea." In 2010,
The New York Times reported that President Obama's top advisers no longer believe one of the findings of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, that Iran ended all nuclear weapons design work in 2003.
2008 In February, Pierre Vimont, the French Ambassador to the United States, urged that the United States adopt a more flexible approach to Iran by accepting its regional role and recognizing that the nuclear issue has broad popular support among Iranians. An op-ed published in January in
The Economist said that the threat of force had "put some steel" into the diplomatic process, and opined, "learning to enrich uranium—a hugely costly venture—still makes questionable economic sense for Iran, since it lacks sufficient natural uranium to keep them going and [they] would have to import the stuff." On 3 March, the United Nations Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions against Iran, due to its refusal to end uranium enrichment and heavy-water-related projects, as it was required to under United Nations resolutions. The Security Council affirmed an earlier decision that Iran must immediately end its uranium enrichment and heavy-water-related projects, and called for "vigilance and restraint" from all members of the United Nations regarding entry of people engaged in providing support for Iran's nuclear activities, and also extended the suspension of financial assets of people/entities who support Iran's nuclear activities. In addition, the council called on United Nations members to "exercise vigilance" regarding the activities of financial institutions in these member states with banks located in Iran, and also to inspect cargo to and from Iran . U.S. officials told
The New York Times that the new sanctions went beyond the nuclear issue. "The new language was written to rein in what they [U.S. officials] see as Tehran's ambitions to become the dominant military power in the Persian Gulf and across the Middle East." In June, the
P5 (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) plus Germany (the P5+1) offered benefits to Iran, including "legally binding" fuel supply guarantees. The deal offered by the P5+1 would leave Iran reliant on external sources of fuel, as is true for most countries with nuclear power programs though many of them also lack indigenous resources to produce their own fuel, or do not have the same strategic security concerns as Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected this proposal, saying that Iran had the right to process uranium for fuel and that Iran "will not retreat one iota in the face of oppressing powers". In December, the ISIS said that Iran had produced 425 kilograms of uranium, and that Iran had "not yet achieved a break-out capability", but that Iran may be close to a break-out capability. In response to statements that Iran had enough material to make a weapon, the Arms Control Association urged the U.S. and the media to exhibit greater care when making claims about Iran's nuclear program. Ivan Oelrich and Ivanka Barzashka, from the Federation of American Scientists, said that the "simplistic calculations" contained in the ISIS article were wrong because "just taking the quantity of LEU and multiplying by the U-235 concentration does not work because not all of the U-235 is recovered".
Cheryl Rofer, a retired 35-year researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and former president of the Los Alamos Committee on Arms Control and International Security, has argued that for Iran to make a bomb from this material it would need to kick all the inspectors out of the country, reconfigure thousands of closely watched centrifuges, and then engage in years of enrichment. According to the American Institute of Physics, the most difficult step in building a nuclear weapon is the production of fissile material. Iran has enriched uranium to "less than 5%", consistent with fuel for a nuclear power plant and well below the purity of WEU (around 90%) typically used in a weapons program. HEU with a purity of 20% or more is usable in a weapon, but this route is less desirable because far more material is required to obtain critical mass. "Our production of a nuclear energy program is completely within the framework or structure of international laws," said Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. David Albright, president of the group which published the report, maintained that Iran's enriched uranium meant that Israel was losing control over the timing of Iran's nuclear activities and that even Iran pretending to have a bomb would be a threat. The International Atomic Energy Agency said its inspectors have not found evidence to suggest that Iran is attempting to process low-enriched uranium into weapons-grade uranium, but expressed concern that Iran was still refusing to comply with the United Nation's requirement of ending its uranium enrichment activity.
2009 A February
Institute for Science and International Security report argued there was a perceived "fundamental inconsistency" between the stated purposes and available information on the capabilities of Iran's domestic uranium production program. The report, citing data published by Iran and the IAEA on Iran's uranium resources, argued that those resources are sufficient for developing a weapons capability, but would not meet the requirements for even a single power reactor. The report stated that "the absence of activity at one of Iran's two uranium mines casts further doubt on its claims that it can establish independence in the fuel cycle required for a civil nuclear energy program."[ The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran responded to this and related stories by saying it had sufficient uranium mines. The Foreign Ministry of Iran said Western claims of a uranium shortage were "media speculation without any scientific basis" and that Iran was not seeking uranium on international markets. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has said surveys had shown proven reserves of approximately 3,000 tons of uranium so far and that the expected resources of Iran could be at the range of 20,000–30,000 tons. The organization said that "according to all the surveys performed in power sector of Iran, nuclear option is the most competitive to fossil alternatives if the existing low domestic fuel prices are gradually increased to its opportunity costs at the level of international prices." In effect, the Bush administration took the position that Iran was too dangerous to be allowed "the technology to produce nuclear material for electricity". In February, the IAEA said that Iran had produced approximately 1,000 kg of low-enriched uranium, which experts say is enough (if further enriched to weapon grade) to produce one nuclear bomb. In that same month, the United States said that Iran's launching of a data processing satellite could be linked to the development of a military nuclear capability and that the activities were of "great concern". The U.S. specifically said it would continue "to address the threats posed by Iran, including those related to its missile and nuclear programs". Despite the U.S. saying it would use all elements of the national power to deal with Tehran, Iran criticized what it perceived as Western double standards, and said the launch was a step to remove what it called a scientific monopoly that certain world countries were trying to impose on the world. Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwafaq al-Rubaie said Iraq was very pleased with the launch of Iran's data-processing national satellite. On 26 February, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Susan Rice said that the United States "will seek to end Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capability and its support for terrorism". Robert Wood, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said that the U.S. believes that "Iran doesn't need to develop its own nuclear capacity" and specifically that the U.S. does not believe that Iran needs to develop an indigenous uranium enrichment capacity. On 8 April 2009, Wood said that "on the basis of mutual respect and mutual interest" the U.S. would sit with the P-5+1 in discussions with Iran and ask the EU High Representative for Common and Foreign Security Policy to extend an invitation to Iran to meet with representatives of the P-5+1. Wood further said, "We hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program". U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that "pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes sense". In March, Iran's ambassador to International Atomic Energy Agency said that UN sanctions united Iranians to protect their "national interest" of enrichment. In April 2009,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country "welcomes a hand extended to it should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect". Karim Sadjadpour, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has said that Iran's leader "holds strongly that Tehran must not compromise in the face of U.S. pressure or intimidation, for it would project weakness and encourage even greater pressure".
Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has said "the United States should be willing to discuss what Iran (as a signatory of the NPT) describes as its "right to enrich". It may well be necessary to acknowledge this right, provided that Iran accepts both limits on its enrichment program (no HEU) and enhanced safeguards". Mark Fitzpatrick, a Senior Fellow for Non‐Proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has said "a key policy challenge is how to build a barrier between a latent nuclear weapons capability and actual weapons production. This is difficult when, as in Iran's case today, the distinction is blurred almost to the point of invisibility."
2010 In April 2010, during the signing of the new
START Treaty between America and Russia, President Obama said that the United States, Russia, and other nations are demanding that Iran face consequences for failing to fulfill their obligations under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that "we will not tolerate actions that flout the NPT, risk an arms race in a vital region, and threaten the credibility of the international community and our collective security." In March 2010, American
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed Iran's nuclear program and President Obama's handling of the program. Clinton said:
2011 In August, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy warned that Iranian attempts to build long-range missiles and nuclear weapons could cause a pre-emptive attack, saying that Iran's "military nuclear and ballistic ambitions" are a "growing threat". Sarkozy blamed Iran for this crisis, noting that "Iran refuses to negotiate seriously. Iran is carrying out new provocations in response to the challenge from the international community for it to provide a credible response." On 1 December, the
European Union agreed to impose sanctions on 180 Iranian officials and companies. These new sanctions target 39 people and 141 companies, and include the freezing of assets and travel bans.
2012 In late January, European Union nations agreed to enforce an oil embargo on Iran as a result of its nuclear program. This move dealt a harsh blow to Iran, forcing Iran to find other buyers for its oil, as the EU is the second largest market for Iranian oil after China. The United States State Department said that these were "the kinds of steps that we would like to see not just from our close allies and partners in places like Europe but from countries around the world." The embargo went into effect on 1 July. In response, British Prime Minister
David Cameron, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy released a joint statement explaining that: During this month, as the European Union was preparing to enforce tougher sanctions against Iran, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy urged "much tougher, more decisive sanctions" in order to avoid military action, explaining that "those who do not want to reinforce sanctions against a regime which is leading its country into disaster by seeking a nuclear weapon will bear responsibility for the risk of a military breakdown." In addition, German foreign minister
Guido Westerwelle said that Iran's nuclear program is "unacceptable and a danger to world peace". In February,
The Financial Times observed: "Current evidence suggests the Iranians want the ability to make a bomb but have not taken the decision to actually build one." An editorial published in
The Economist noted that with the money spent on its nuclear program, Iran could have built "ten conventional plants of the same capacity, fired solely by the natural gas that Iran currently flares off into the sky". David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has argued oil and gas production has its own costs, that Iran gains strategic value from being an oil and gas exporter, and that "as a sovereign nation Iran is entitled to make its own sovereign decisions as to how provide for its own energy needs". British Foreign Secretary
William Hague warned in February that Iran's nuclear program may lead to other countries in the
Middle East seeking to gain nuclear weapons should Iran develop nuclear weapons, which could trigger a new
Cold War and begin the "most serious round of nuclear proliferation since nuclear weapons were developed." Hague also said "That would be a disaster in world affairs." Hague stressed that "all options" should remain on the table, but stated that a military strike would have "enormous downsides". In the same month, Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper said that he feared that Iran was prepared to use nuclear weapons if they developed one, and said that Iran's nuclear program is "a grave threat to peace and security". Harper explained that compared to nearly all other possessors of nuclear weapons in the past, the Iranian government has less of a fear to use them, noting that "we're dealing with a fanatical and dangerous regime." Compared to the debate regarding
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, which was used as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003, Harper explained that "I don't think there's much debate today among informed people about Iran's intentions and Iran's systematic progress toward attaining nuclear weapons. In March, a Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that a majority of Americans, 56%, would support military action against Iran, even if it led to increased gas prices, if there was evidence demonstrating that Tehran was building nuclear weapons. 39% said that they opposed a military strike, while 62% of Americans said that they'd support Israel striking Iran over its nuclear program. A special report by
Reuters in March reported that, "the United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead." A
Congressional Research Service report obtained by
Bloomberg several days later concluded that Iran's "workshops" for making nuclear centrifuges and components for the devices are widely dispersed and hidden, that neither Israel nor the United States is certain of the locations of all such facilities, and that Iran could recover from an attack on its nuclear sites within six months, compounding the difficulties of a potential military strike by Israel. A poll conducted in July found that 80% of Americans view Iran's nuclear program as a threat to the United States and its
NATO allies. 39% viewed it as a very big threat, 41% viewed it was a moderate threat, 12% viewed it as not much of a threat, and 6% viewed it as not being a threat. In regards to how much of a threat the nuclear program is to Israel, 60% viewed it as a very big threat to Israel while 27% viewed it as a moderate threat. 80% believe that Iran is building nuclear weapons, including 72% of
Democrats, 81% of
Independents, and 89% of
Republicans. In July,
MI6 Chief Sir John Sawyers stated that he believes that Iran could become a nuclear weapons state in two years (2014). He also stated that
covert operations by British spies denied Iran from developing nuclear weapons as early as 2008. According to Sawyers, "It's equally clear that Israel and the United States would face huge dangers if Iran were to become a nuclear weapon state. I think it will be very tough for any prime minister of Israel or president of the United States to accept a nuclear-armed Iran." Sawyers stated that military action may happen in such a case, but that it was the job of MI6 to "delay that awful moment when the politicians may have to take a decision between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or launching a military strike against Iran". In August, ''Ha'aretz'' reported on a
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report released from Washington showed that the American intelligence community believes that Iran is making important steps in its development of a nuclear weapon, a viewpoint similar to that of Israel, and represents a major turn from the last NIE report on Iran in 2007. The report writes about "alarming" intelligence concerning Iran's nuclear program, including marked progress on key elements of its weaponization drive. In late August, French President
Francois Hollande said that Iran can't be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, even for a single day, and that Iran's nuclear program is a "threat to all the countries in the region and cannot be allowed in a regime that frequently calls for the destruction of the State of Israel". In early September, Britain, France, and Germany called for new sanctions to be imposed on Iran over its nuclear program. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle stated that new sanctions should be discussed as a result of Iran's failure to comply with international demands to reduce its nuclear work, and labelled the result of three rounds of negotiations in 2012 with Iran and world leaders as "disappointing". On 7 September, Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran, closed its embassy in Tehran, and expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada, citing a variety of reasons, amongst them the Iranian nuclear program and threats against Israel. A few weeks later, Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper said that the Iranian government is "unambiguously, a clear and present danger" due to a combination of its nuclear program anad other factors. On 9 September, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle stressed that "a nuclear-armed Iran would not only pose a threat to Israel but to the stability of the entire region." Westerwelle explained that Germany shares Israel's concerns about Iran's nuclear program, and that "a nuclear-armed Iran is not an option." On 22 September, the
United States Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution by a vote of 90-1 which reaffirmed American efforts to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The resolution also said that the use of containment regarding a nuclear-capable Iran is not an option. On 24 September, Britain, France, and Germany appealed to the European Union to enforce new sanctions on Iran due to its nuclear program, with a diplomat explaining that "we think there is still time for a political solution, a diplomatic solution, and this is what we are working for. But we cannot accept nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran." On 26 September, former United States President
Bill Clinton announced that the world needs to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, noting that the Iranian government has a record of "supporting terror and if they had nuclear weapon, it would be (too dangerous), even if you believe they never use". Clinton also said that this can not be compared to Israel's situation, saying that there isn't any reason to prevent Israel from developing nuclear weapons should it choose, because "Israel is not supporting Hezbollah. Israel doesn't send terrorists to cross Syria to train in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. No one thinks that Israel is about to drop a bomb on Tehran." Bill Clinton also said that: A poll conducted in September by Basswood Research for
The Foreign Policy Initiative revealed that Iran was cited as the most dangerous threat to American national security interests, with 45.1% of respondents choosing Iran. In addition, 62% of Americans favored preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, even if this requires the use of military force, as opposed to avoiding a conflict and accepting the prospects of Iranian nuclear weapons. On 30 October, French President
François Hollande called on Iran to take "concrete action" against its nuclear program, and explained that Iran hadn't proven that its nuclear program was peaceful. Hollande said that France was prepared to vote for more sanctions on Iran.
2013 Analyzing Iranian nuclear policy, Uriel Abulof submits that "facing a deepening legitimacy crisis, the Iranian regime, throughout Ahmadinejad's tenure, has been increasingly drawing on nuclear diversion to boost public support," and that "if the legitimacy crisis lingers, the regime may opt to further employ diversionary nuclear strategies, most of which require a viable 'nuclear latency,' rather than actual military nuclear capability." On 15 June 2013,
Hassan Rohani won the
Iranian presidential election and assumed office on 3 August 2013. Rouhani is considered "the most moderate and outward-looking of the presidential cadidiates deemed fit to contest the election by the supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei" and subsequently "has raised hopes for a nuclear deal between Iran and the international community."
The Economist, however, argues that neither a moderate Iranian president, nor sanctions, or military threats will divert Iran from attaining the capability to rapidly "produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one or more bombs before the
IAEA or Western intelligence agencies would even know it had done so." Rohani can improve relations with
the West through constructive engagement and ultimately ease the burden of sanctions on Iran. But Iran could take advantage of its rosier international standing by continuing to enrich uranium and achieve a breakout capability. ==G8==