The leaders of the Western world have finally come to the agreement that Iran is indeed in the process of developing nuclear weapons. The debate has now shifted away from the existence of the nuclear weapons to the possibility of Iran's efforts to design a nuclear warhead. The warhead would be the final step in the completion of the nuclear weapon.

Each country has a different opinion as to the status of Iran's nuclear warhead efforts. Israel believes that the effort to design the warhead has restarted, while Germany believes the effort had never stopped. The United States believes that the Iranian effort to develop a nuclear warhead did in fact stop in 2003 and has not yet been restarted. That is not to say that the effort will never be restarted, but at the moment the United States does not consider the warhead a concern. This opinion is based on the intelligence of various spy agencies, including satellite imagery and electronic eavesdropping.

The New York Times refers to this disagreement as the "mirror image" of the debate prior to the Iraq War. Again, the United States is in disagreement with the other Western states, yet this time it is the other states who are more concerned about the status of the nuclear weapons. The differences in opinions about this particular issue represent each state's general feelings about how to deal with the Iranian nuclear weapons. The states who have voiced concern about the warheads want to pursue a proactive strategy, while the United States is less concerned about an immediate reaction.

This debate is significant because if the United States is able to convince other nations that the warhead is not an immediate threat, then conflict in the near future may be averted.

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Act now against nuclear proliferation. 

In responding to Iran's recent offer for talks concerning international nuclear non-proliferation, the State Department has said that the offer fails to deal with America's central concern: Iran's nuclear program.

This comes in the wake of news from U.S. Intelligence agencies that Iran has developed enough nuclear fuel to create a nuclear weapon, should it choose to. The country, however, has stopped short of the last few steps needed to make the bomb.

In the first public acknowledgment of the intelligence findings, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Wednesday that Iran now had what he called a "possible breakout capacity" if it decided to enrich its stockpile of uranium, converting it to bomb-grade material.

The statement by the ambassador, Glyn Davies, was intended to put pressure on American allies to move toward far more severe sanctions against Iran this month, perhaps including a cutoff of gasoline to the country, if it failed to take up President Obama's invitation for serious negotiations.

Iran has maintained that its continuing enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, that the uranium is solely for electric power and that its scientists have never researched weapons design. But in a 2007 announcement, the United States said that it had found evidence that Iran had worked on designs for making a warhead, though it determined that the project was halted in late 2003. The new intelligence information collected by the Obama administration finds no convincing evidence that the design work has resumed.

The American position is that the United States and its allies would probably have considerable warning time if Iran moved to convert its growing stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to make it usable for weapons.

Take action now against nuclear proliferation!