Western powers should work on the assumption that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by next year and an Israeli intelligence assessment of 2015 could be over-optimistic, British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said on Monday. Meir Dagan, outgoing director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, said this month that Israel believed Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear bomb before 2015.
But Fox, answering questions in parliament, said Dagan was "wrong to insinuate that we should always look at the more optimistic end of the spectrum" of estimates of Iran's nuclear capability.