International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 9 Mar 2009

Israeli military intelligence confirmed on Sunday that Iran has mastered the technology for building a nuclear weapon, on the same day that the Iranian Air Force successfully tested a new air-to-surface missile.

The Iranian military has "crossed the technological threshold," and the only thing left is to find a way of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy," OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Israeli government cabinet on Sunday.

Yadlin added that "Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb."

Insisting that Iran was just using the expected dialogue with the US administration to buy time, Yadlin noted that Washington’s new approach "is being received with caution [in the Arab world]. The moderates [Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan] are worried that this approach will come at their expense and will be used by the radical axis to continue to carry out terror activities and rearm."

Yadlin's assessment echoed that of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last week that the Iranian military already has enough fissile material to build a nuclear device, and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, which reported that earlier reports it had made were a mistake and they now had evidence that Iran possesses enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. There was disagreement on this point from US Defense Secretary Robert Gates however, who disagreed and said that Iran is not "close to a weapon at this point."

Yadlin's announcement was not made in public, but according to one highly placed Israeli official "He wanted to ring the alarm bells... The idea was to shake people up, to show that the Iranians were still making progress." Although the news is concerning, the official said it's one thing to have technology and another to actually build the machines needed to implement it.

Meanwhile, Iran's Fars news agency reported on Sunday that the Iranian Air Force had test-fired a new air-to-surface missile. According to the report, the domestically produced missile has a range of 110 km and was designed for air attacks against ships, thus posing a threat to US Navy vessels protecting the major oil supply routes out of the Persian Gulf which carry 40 percent of the world's oil shipments. Iran has threatened to close the Straits as part of the opening move in any future conflict with the US and its allies in the Gulf over its renegade nuclear program.

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