Iran is still “a couple of years” away from having enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon, the commander of US forces in the Middle East said on Sunday.
“The bottom line: We think it’s a couple of years away in that regard. It could be more, could be a little bit less,” General David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, said in interview on CNN.
“There are certainly a lot of facts that we don’t know about what goes on inside Iran,” Petraeus said.
The US and its European allies fear that Tehran intends to acquire a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, which Iran denies.
But Petraeus said that to acquire a weapon, Iran must have enough highly enriched uranium, must make a warhead and have long-range missiles capable of delivering them. US intelligence believes Iran halted a secret program to design a nuclear weapon in 2003.
On the other hand, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, predicted last week that Iran would have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon within a year but is not rushing to produce one.
“The Iranian strategy is not to get a nuclear bomb as soon as they can so as not to give the world a reason to act against them,” Yadlin told the Israeli parliament.
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges were assisting with emergency cases as more than 1 million doctors were expected to strike Hospitals and clinics across India yesterday turned away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals began a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata. More than 1 million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralyzing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases. The strike, which began at 6am, cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, the Indian Medical Association said in a statement. The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied