(3 of 5)
Ironically, Iran's program resembles that of its archfoe, Saddam Hussein. Like Iraq, Iran is carrying on its bomb program in small facilities, allegedly for peaceful research, that until recently escaped international attention. Also like Saddam, according to the most detailed accounts from nearby intelligence sources, Iran is trying a number of different methods to produce bomb fuel, which is strictly controlled on the world market. It has agreed to buy a small plutonium-producing reactor from China and is negotiating another such deal with India. At the same time, it is experimenting with three processes, including a highly sophisticated laser technique for enriching uranium to weapons grade (U-235, the readily fissionable isotope, constitutes less than 1% of freshly mined uranium; that must be increased to at least 80% for explosive purposes). Iran already has one enrichment plant, thought to employ the centrifuge method, at Mualem Kilaya, and may have another in Karaj, north of Tehran. It bought a calutron, which also enriches uranium, from the Chinese, but has not yet installed the device.
U.S. analysts think Tehran would need at least a decade to wield the Bomb, even assuming all-out help from China. "China has taken over from France as the world's greatest proliferator of nuclear technology," says Kenneth Timmerman, author of a book on the Iraqi nuclear program. Beijing is recklessly peddling nuclear equipment and expertise to just about any nation willing and able to pay cash. If China can be persuaded or coerced to cut back, American intelligence officials believe, Iran will not be able to develop an explosible bomb in the foreseeable future.
But some Middle East experts take a darker view. They hear reports that in addition to help from China, Iran is getting "hot cells" -- heavily shielded compartments in which highly radioactive material can be handled by remote control -- from Argentina. And though American experts believe Tehran's Chinese calutron will produce medical isotopes, Iran might be able to modify the design and reproduce from its own resources more, and bigger, calutrons to turn out bomb fuel. In the pessimists' view, Tehran could be producing nuclear weapons in six or seven years.
ALGERIA. When Algeria signed a contract three years ago to have China build a 15-MW reactor, U.S. analysts showed little concern. They thought it would be, as advertised, a research facility. But early this year, U.S. satellites spotted antiaircraft defenses that had mystifyingly been set up in the middle of the Algerian desert. A closer look turned up signs of construction of a nearly complete nuclear reactor; vegetation planted around it in a characteristically Chinese pattern provided a strong clue as to who was building it. From the size of the cooling towers, the reactor appeared to be of 50-to-60-MW capacity. Experts such as Leonard Spector of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace say a reactor that size has only one function: to produce plutonium for bomb fuel. Also, as in the case of North Korea, there were no power lines or electrical generating equipment at the site.