WASHINGTON, Aug 2: Iran will be able to produce highly enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear device within 10 years, according to the US National Intelligence Council. The new timeframe is different from the one given in 2001 by the same agency which said that Iran was five years away from manufacturing a nuclear device.

The estimate, designed to alert the US president to national security developments, said there were credible indicators that Iran’s military was conducting clandestine work, but nothing to indicate they were related to a nuclear weapons programme.

The report, partly published in the Washington Post on Tuesday, also expresses uncertainty about whether Iran’s leaders have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal. Officials familiar with the report, however, warn that left to its own devices, Iran would pursue the nuclear weapons path.

A US bipartisan presidential panel reported in March that US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear programme is “inadequate” for making firm judgments about the country’s weapons programme. The report also expresses doubts over the duration of the clerics’ rule in Iran. It doesn’t speak specifically whether clerics would still be in power by the time the country will be able to producing nuclear material.

“The US administration keeps hoping the mullahs will leave before Iran gets a nuclear weapons capability,” the report quoted a US official as saying. Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will restart uranium ore conversion at the cost of scuttling the talks with the European Union.

“The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among US intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House,” the Post notes.

Bush Administration officials have asserted, without offering any proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. The Post points out that at no time in the past three years the White House has attributed its assertions about Iran to US intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion.

Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would require a large-scale nuclear energy programme.

The national intelligence estimate, ordered by the National Intelligence Council in January, addresses those assertions and offers alternative views supporting and challenging the assumptions they are based on.