By: Claude Salhani – Middle East Times

Call it the Iranian tango. For the United States, engaging Iran in politics is akin to executing a political tango, if such a beast exists; you take one step forward and two steps back, another step forward and then another two steps back.

No sooner had the U.S. administration of Barack Obama announced Wednesday that it will be taking part in talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, the very next day the Iranians announced they had reached the hallmark point of running 7,000 centrifuges, an important stepping stone on the way to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

Having crossed that hurdle, and with centrifuges churning away around the clock to upgrade uranium, which could relatively quickly be turned into weapons-grade uranium, one U.S. expert in nuclear energy and weaponry estimates Iran could have a working bomb within 50 to 60 days.

The word to underline here is “could.”

As explains Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), a Washington-based nonprofit organization, it does not necessarily mean they will have enough weapons-grade uranium within that time frame. That day could be as far away as 12 months.

Sokolski told the Middle East Times “Iran could have a nuclear bomb as early as 50 to 60 days from now and as late as one year away.”

However, cautioned Sokolski, who served as deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Office of the secretary of defense under then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz from 1989 to 1993, this would be realistic only if Iran were capably of keeping all 7,000 machines going 24 hours a day and 7 days a week with absolutely no stoppage, that they have lined up all 7,000 units, that all work perfectly well and that there is no breakdown or interruption.

That most likely not being the case, Sokolski added, “I would suggest that the amount of time it takes to make a bomb could be less than a year.” Sokolski estimates that Iran could produce about 60 bombs in the first 12 to 18 months of operations.

However, no one knows for sure if the Iranians have a device needed to deliver that bomb. Jennifer Lazlo-Mizrahi from The Israel Project told the Middle East Times, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

And although it would be suicidal for Iran to deploy nuclear weapons given that the retaliation would be immediate and ruthless, Lazlo-Mizrahi says “when people who dream of martyrdom and send 12-year-olds to clear mine fields [as the Iranians did during the Iraq-Iran war], you simply have to conclude that these people don’t think like the rest of us.”

“All this is another way of saying if you want a sound policy with Iran you have to assume they have a bomb,” added Sokolski. “This is something you can’t discount.”

Ahmadinejad said Iran must continue its nuclear development to increase its status among nations, and he criticized the United States and other “enemies” for trying to restrict its progress. Iran will not stand down, he said.

In a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency, Ahmadinejad said Iran was “ready to cooperate” toward nuclear disarmament as long as those efforts did not create obstacles.

Based on the amount of low-enriched uranium Iran has stockpiled, and the amount it is believed to be producing each month, the Wisconsin Project estimates that by December 2008, Iran had accumulated enough U-235 to fuel one bomb quickly. “Quickly,” in this context, means two to three months; about the time it would take Iran to raise the level of U-235 in its uranium stockpile from 3.5 percent to over 90 percent.

The Wisconsin Project was established in 1986 by now-Emeritus Professor Gary Milhollin as a non-profit, non-partisan organization that operates in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin. The organization’s work is guided by the idea that the best way to stop the proliferation of mass destruction weapons is to do so at the source: to cut off the supply of material, equipment and technology needed to make these weapons.

But an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned about drawing such conclusions. The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium would have to be turned into highly enriched uranium to be weapons-grade material.