WASHINGTON, March 1: America’s top military official said on Sunday he believed Iran had enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon, but he was contradicted by his boss, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who said the Islamic Republic was a long way from having a bomb.

“We think they do, quite frankly,” said Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when asked in a Sunday talk show if Iran had enough material to make a nuclear bomb.

“Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world,” he added.

But Secretary Gates said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Iran was not close to getting a weapon at this time.

“They’re not close to a stockpile, they’re not close to a weapon at this point and so there is some time,” he said when asked whether Tehran could be deterred from pursuing its weapons effort.

The International Atomic Energy Agency – a UN nuclear watchdog – reported last week that Iran had managed to enrich a metric ton of low enriched uranium, technically enough to build a nuclear weapon.

But Secretary Gates said since Iran was not closing to making a nuclear weapon yet, it gave the US and its European allies time to try to persuade Tehran to abandon its suspected atomic arms programme.

A substantial decline in oil prices, he added, would also help persuade Iran to reconsider its plan for making nuclear weapons.

“Our chances of being successful, it seems to me, are a lot better at $35 or $40 oil than they were at $140 oil because there are economic costs to this programme, they do have economic challenges at home,” Mr Gates said.

Admiral Mullen said he had not been given “any instructions one way or the other” on whether to continue working on an anti-ballistic missile shield that aimed to counter the Iranian threat, although it was to be deployed in East Europe.

“There are an awful lot of reviews that are ongoing under President Obama, and there’s an awful lot on all of our plates. So that’s a review that will, I think, take place. And over time, that’s much more a policy area than it is mine, per se,” he said.
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