Britannia's foreign spy chief has reportedly warned that Iran is two years away from acquiring nuclear weapons, but analysts said he was assuming Tehran is actually developing the bomb.MI6 boss John Sawers gave a rare public speech to civil servants in London saying that British agents had prevented Iran from producing a nuclear weapon as early as 2008, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday.
But Sawers said the threat of Iran becoming "a nuclear weapons state" was now only "two years away", said the Telegraph, citing Civil Service World, a newspaper for senior ministry officials and politicians which reported the event.
Should Iran finally acquire nuclear weapons, the intelligence chief warned that Israel and the United States "would face huge dangers", hinting at the increased likelihood of military action, according to the Telegraph article.
Iran since 2010 has been subject to severe international economic sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme, which Western powers believe masks an atomic weapons drive -- despite repeated denials by Tehran.
But analysts said Sawer's comments pointed to an assumption that Tehran was already developing a nuclear weapon.
"Most Western intelligence agencies believe that Iran has not made the decision to acquire a nuclear weapon, but is amassing the capability to weaponise when it decides to do so," analyst Dina Esfandiary of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told AFP.
"He (Sawers) seems to be completely glossing over that," she said.
"At the moment, Iran has enough low-enriched uranium for four or five bombs if further enriched," she said, explaining that only highly-enriched uranium can be used for weapons.