Iran could recover from a military strike in six months

March 29, 2012 – IRAN – Iran’s “workshops” for making nuclear centrifuges and components for the devices are widely dispersed and hidden, adding to the difficulties of a potential military strike by Israel, according to a new report by U.S. congressional researchers. A senior official surmised that Iran could recover from a military strike on its centrifuge facilities within six months. Neither Israel nor the U.S. is certain of the locations of all such facilities, analysts for the Congressional Research Service wrote in the report obtained Wednesday. The analysts cited interviews with current and former U.S. government officials familiar with the issue who weren’t identified. Qatar says no U.S. strike on Iran from its soil Israel’s capability to halt or set back Iran’s nuclear program through a military strike has been central to the debate over whether Israel should undertake such a mission alone. While U.S. President Barack Obama has urged more time for economic sanctions to work, Israeli officials led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak say it may soon be too late to prevent Iran from developing the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. The likelihood of dispersed facilities complicates any assessment of a potential raid’s success, making it “unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,” the report found. A U.S. official said in April 2011 that there “could be lots of workshops’ in Iran,” the authors said. Last month, a former U.S. government official with “direct experience” in the issue told the researchers that “Iran’s centrifuge production is widely distributed and that the number of workshops has probably multiplied ‘many times’ since 2005 because of an increase in Iranian contractors and subcontractors working on the program.” –Jerusalem Post