LONDON, May 30 (KUNA) -- Iran's nuclear programme made "big strides" in recent months and the country is on course to pass an important threshold for nuclear weapons capability next year, scientists and analysts said Friday.
Ever since Iran started enriching uranium in defiance of UN resolutions, Western diplomats have highlighted the technological obstacles facing the country, arguing that they provided time to deal with the dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme, the Financial Times (FT) newspaper said.
But several leading experts have said that Iran is now twice as effective in enriching uranium as before, based on a report this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
They add that during the course of the next year Iran is likely to build up a stockpile of enriched uranium that in theory could be turned into enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months.
While the US and its allies charge Tehran with seeking nuclear weapons, Iran insists its purposes are purely peaceful, the FT added.
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, concurs with other analysts that while Iran was previously only enriching uranium at 20 percent of the rate it sought, it is now operating at about 50 percent.
"Their centrifuges work better (at enriching uranium) and they are working to develop more advanced centrifuges," he said.
Some analysts have suggested that Iran's real goal may be a "virtual" nuclear status in which the country does not have the bomb but can develop it relatively speedily, the FT concluded. (end) he.ema KUNA 301306 May 08NNNN