posted July 16, 2001 15:12            

WASHINGTON: Iran and North Korea may already have produced and be in possession of nuclear weapons, according to a former US Air Force intelligence official. "There have been troubling nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea in recent years. How much bomb-grade enriched uranium and plutonium Iran now possesses is not clear but the CIA can no longer rule out the possibility that Iran already has nuclear weapons," Donald Lane Berlin wrote in the Strategic Review magazine.

He said Iran has been pursuing the development or acquisition of nuclear arms for a long time. "In the recent past, Iran increased its efforts to acquire nuclear materials and technology on the international black market, mainly from entities in the former Soviet Union."

Unfortunately, Berlin continues, much the same ambiguity applies to the North Korean nuclear program. Notwithstanding this ambiguity, it does appear that North Korea has some nuclear weapons and that it is continuing to pursue, albeit probably more slowly than previously, the development of nuclear arms and the necessary missile technology to employ those weapons.