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Israel's Barak Says Iran Has Pulled Back from the Brink of Nuclear Weapon - For Now
(Telegraph-UK) David Blair - Iran has drawn back from its ambition to build a nuclear weapon but the respite is only temporary and Tehran will still have to be confronted by next summer, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said on Tuesday. A crisis was avoided in the summer when Iran quietly chose to use over a third of its medium-enriched uranium for civilian purposes, delaying the moment when it could have built a nuclear bomb, Barak told the Daily Telegraph. Iran delayed the "moment of truth" by "eight to 10 months," but Barak predicted that sanctions and diplomacy would still fail to resolve the stand-off. If so, he said that Israel and its allies would probably face the decision over whether to strike Iran's nuclear facilities in 2013. He noted that during the past five years Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium had grown from 850 kg. to 6.8 tons. Israel reserved the right to act alone, added Barak, who stated that any "operation against Iran" would be less dangerous "now" than when the country had crossed the nuclear threshold.