BERLIN, April 26 (UPI) -- A new book written by two German investigative journalists takes an in-depth look at how long it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon, and weighs possible measures availble to prevent the ongoing crisis with the West from escalating.
To tell the tale of the world's most controversial nuclear program, Gero von Randow and Ulrich Ladurner, reporters for Germany's prominent weekly Die Zeit, travelled to Iran and Pakistan for research.
In Islamabad, they researched Tehran's links to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and the man who equipped Iran with gas centrifuges back in 1995. In Natanz, they investigated one of Iran's biggest uranium enrichment facilities.
The project was undertaken to help answer the question troubling non-proliferation experts today: How long would it take Iran to build a nuclear bomb?
The journalists have come to their own answer, and they make their case in the book "Die Iranische Bombe" (The Iranian Bomb), which first hit bookstores earlier this month.
"Iran needs roughly 1,700 working centrifuges to within one year build an atomic bomb," they write, adding that the Islamic Republic at the moment has an estimated 700 unconnected centrifuges, plus enough material to build another 1,000. The centrifuges are needed to enrich uranium to a high degree, the key element of a nuclear weapon.
While the numbers are available, the road to obtaining a bomb is difficult: To enable military-style enrichment, all 1,700 centrifuges would have to be assembled to one cascade system, which takes a substantial amount of time, they write.
And then there is the know-how needed for such an elaborate process. "Those systems cannot be built and run from a blueprint or a manual; experience is needed to master them."
Iran's technicians, they write, do not have such experience.
All those insecurities brushed aside, "then the assumption is plausible that it would take Iran at least three, probably five years to have enough uranium for a nuclear bomb," they write, adding that Tehran then would need at least a year to build it, more time to test it and make sure the carrier system works.
"One can say... that Iran is more than five and less than ten years away from a serviceable nuclear weapon."
But the question remains whether Iran actually wants the bomb, and why. Von Randow and Ladurner take into account the Muslim point of view when examining Pakistan's and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"Muslims feel mortified by the West. Their home countries are politically, socially and militarily inferior," they write. "As a general rule, this inferiority is experienced as a daily humiliation. It's not important if that is actually the case or not, it's how it is perceived. That's why possession of the bomb has become a symbol."
For Iran, they say, it may be much simpler to fuel speculations that it has the deterring capability of building a nuclear bomb then actually obtaining it.
However, if Tehran wants the bomb, it will likely be able to get it, they write, based on past experiences with Pakistan, North Korea and Libya -- three countries that have managed to hide their weapons program from inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Organization, the United Nation's nuclear watchdog. "It's possible to obtain all materials needed for a nuclear bomb illegally."
The West believes Iran is using its atomic energy program to secretly build nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. In 2003, the IAEA discovered Iran had carried out secret nuclear activities for 18 years in breach of its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. Fear of a nuclear first strike is fueled by aggressive anti-Semitic rhetoric by Iranian hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who in the past has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
The desire for a nuclear program in Iran didn't start with Ahmadinejad, but is decades-old, the journalists write. Today, it is based on the wish to establish political supremacy in the region in an ongoing battle with the United States.
A nuclear-powered Iran is a "pressing problem," the journalists conclude.
"The annihilation anti-Semitism that Ahmadinejad has turned into politics has to be taken seriously," they write. "Miscalculations on both sides (namely in Iran, Israel and the United States) could lead to a nuclear inferno."
A preventive military air strike, as Washington is reported to be considering, would only worsen the crisis, fuel instability in the region, and cause developing countries and Iran's often regime-critical population to side with Ahmadinejad.
Rather, the international community should try to enlarge the time frame by urging Iran to agree to a combination of a moratorium and security controls; form international alliances and launch hierarchical sanctions, such as "travel bans, export sanctions of all kind, and import controls of industrial goods."
All those measures may "fuel the unhappiness of Iranian economic leaders with the isolationist course of the regime."
