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UK: Iran Could Have Nuclear Weapons by 2012

31 January 2011 21:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Britain’s defense secretary says Iran could have nuclear weapons by next year, APA reports quoting â€œThe Voice of Americaâ€.

Liam Fox on Monday said the West should be wary of optimism in connection with Iran’s nuclear program and make decisions on the basis of the most pessimistic assessment of its capability.

Fox said he disagrees with former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Dagan, who said recently that Iran would not have a working nuclear weapon before 2015.

Iran denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful use. World powers have imposed international sanctions to force Iran towards more nuclear transparency.

Fox’s assessment comes days after the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China failed to persuade Iran to open its atomic program to more scrutiny.

The Associated Press says Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor might have been seriously compromised by a sophisticated computer worm unleased last year.

The Associated Press Monday quotes a foreign intelligence report as saying the worm has penetrated the control systems at the plant, which could result in a Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational.

The news agency says the report was produced by an unidentified nation closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has acknowledged that the worm hit the laptops of technicians working at Bushehr, but has denied that the plant was affected.

In 1986, a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, spewing radiation over a large stretch of northern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people were resettled from areas contaminated with radiation fallout in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Related health problems still persist.