WASHINGTON: A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely only delay the country’s progress toward a nuclear-weapons capability, according to new study that concludes that such an attack could backfire by strengthening Tehran’s resolve to acquire the bomb.

The analysis by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security found that Iran’s uranium facilities are too widely dispersed and protected — and, in some cases, too concealed — to be effectively destroyed by warplanes. And any damage to the country’s nuclear programme could be quickly repaired.

”Following an attack, Iran could quickly rebuild its centrifuge programme in small, easily hidden facilities focused on making weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons,” said principal author David Albright, ISIS president and a former UN weapons inspector.

The study, scheduled for release Friday, was based in part on a comparison of Iran’s known nuclear facilities with Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by Israeli jets in a 1981 strike intended to curb Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. While Israel struck a devastating blow against Iraq’s programme, a strike against Iran would be harder by several orders of magnitude, according to Albright and co-authors Paul Brannan and Jacqueline Shire.

The core of Iran’s programme is its massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, where thousands of machines called centrifuges create the uranium fuel used in making nuclear energy. Although Iran says its efforts are intended for peaceful energy purposes, its stocks of enriched uranium could be used in to build nuclear weapons.

Last year, US intelligence officials concluded that Iran halted nuclear weapons research in 2003, but continued to expand its capabilities in ways that would allow it to quickly develop such weapons in the future.

Despite heavy fortification, the subterranean Natanz plant could be heavily damaged in an air strike using bunker-busting bombs or missiles. But the actual centrifuges could be replaced rapidly, perhaps in hidden underground facilities, the ISIS report said. Iran is known to have constructed bunkers inside mountain tunnels near Natanz and other major nuclear sites.

While Iran once relied on imported technology and parts to build its centrifuges, it is now largely self-sufficient. The manufacture of key components is dispersed among a number of government-controlled factories, while imported parts such as high-strength aluminum have been stockpiled over the last decade, the report notes.

Moreover, since 2006, when Iran began limiting access to its nuclear facilities by UN nuclear facilities, Western governments can no longer say with certainty where some key facilities are located, ISIS said.

”Current knowledge of the complex is lacking,” the report stated. “Without that knowledge, an attack is unlikely to significantly delay Iran’s mastery of enrichment with gas centrifuges.”

According to Albright, an Israeli or US attack would result in broader popular support for Iran’s ruling clerics and could lead Tehran to sever ties with the UN nuclear watchdog.

”Iran would likely launch a ‘crash’ programme to quickly obtain nuclear weapons,” Albright said in an interview. “An attack would likely leave Iran angry, more nationalistic, fed up with international inspectors and non-proliferation treaties, and more determined than ever to obtain nuclear weapons.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service© The Washington Post