Iran undecided on nuclear bomb
Israel's armed forces chief-of-staff does not believe Iran will take the decision to build a nuclear bomb, he told an Israeli newspaper in an interview published yesterday.
Speaking to the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said Iran was going "step-by-step to the place where it will be able to decide if it wants to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
"It still hasn't decided yet whether to go the extra mile," he was quoted as saying, expressing a view also held by the administration of US President Barack Obama.
As long as its nuclear facilities were unprotected from attack, "the programme is too vulnerable from (Iran's) perspective," Gantz said.
Iran has already developed the capacity to enrich uranium to 20 percent, which is used to create medical isotopes, but going "the extra mile" would mean working to enrich to 90 percent -- the level needed to make nuclear weapons.
"If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will move forward towards acquiring a nuclear bomb, but along the way, a decision must still be taken," he said.
"In my opinion, he would be making a huge mistake if he does so, and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile," Gantz said.
"I think that the Iranian leadership is made up of very rational people."
Gantz said 2012 would be a very important year, but he was reluctant to describe it as make-or-break.
He also said the growing campaign of diplomatic pressure and international sanctions imposed on Iran was beginning to work.
His language in discussing Iran were far from the fiery rhetoric used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz said.
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