PARIS, Feb 9 Bruno Tertrais, a researcher at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research and one of the leading specialists on the Iranian nuclear programme, says that Iran will be able to develop its own bomb in 5-10 years, and only if it really decides it wants to have one in the first place.

The opinion by the author in the publication, L’Asie Nucleaire, published by the French Institute for International Relations, the country’s foremost think tank on foreign relations, contradicts the estimation recently made in Washington by Israeli defence minister Ben Eliezer who claimed that if Iran doesn’t already have the bomb, it will do so “between now and 2005.”

“It’s no secret,” says Mr Tertrais, “that Iran established a military nuclear programme many years ago.” According to his estimations however, “it will be capable of having a bomb anywhere between 5 and 10 years, that is if it really wants to have one, which isn’t necessarily the same thing.”

Mr Tertrais also stresses that the decision by Iran to have its own nuclear capability is nothing new and existed long before the arrival in power, in 1979, of Ayatollah Khomeini.

“Indeed Iran’s nuclear programme is largely the doing of France and goes back to the early 1970s, when the Shah convinced French authorities that it was to their advantage to sell to Iran the necessary technology, that Iran might otherwise obtain from Washington, wrote Mr Tertrais.

“As it turned out,” he continues, “France decided to sell to Iran five nuclear plants in 1974,” although the cooperation eventually ceased, especially after the arrival in power of Ayatollah Khomeini.

“Today, continues Mr Tertrais, “it is Russia and China who are assisting Iran in developing a civilian nuclear capacity, although they obviously realize that part of the technological know how they are providing can be use in a military nuclear programme.”

If Iran has chosen to give itself a bomb, which is highly likely in the estimation of Mr Tertrais, “then it will be entirely with a view to protecting its territory, not only from Washington and Israel, perceived by Tehran as wanting to become the dominant power in the region, but perhaps more so from Iraq,” which is also considered as either possessing a nuclear device already, or, like Iran, is capable of developing one if it does choose one day to have a bomb.”

As for American and Israeli charges that an Iranian bomb would be the same thing as an Islamic bomb and would be used, for example, in support of Palestine, Mr Tertrais emphasizes that, in the case of Iran, “that an Islamic country has the bomb doesn’t necessarily mean that it has an Islamic bomb, indeed it doesn’t mean either that it’s more dangerous in its hands than if it is in the hands of any other country.”

“If ever Iran does choose to go ahead and give itself a nuclear device,” says Mr Tertrais, “then chances are it will be a Persian bomb much more than an Islamic bomb.”