Frank Gardner
Correspondent

The big question in all this is a more worrying than ‘will Iran try to close the strategic hormuz strait?’, Although this would surely have major economic, political and military consequences.

On the contrary, the worst question for everyone, to which almost none of us know that the answer is this: does Iran still keep uranium highly enriched (HEU), hidden in a underground secret place, plus the knowledge and tools to arm it, to make a decision to compete for a raw nuclear bomb?

In other words, have the combined American and Israeli attacks removed that Iran to become a nuclear armed state made it more likely?

A military expert I have spoken claims that if Iran has managed to keep enough of his HEU, then its scientists, if they are left to work unobstructed, be able to test a simple, first-generation first-type device using a neutron initiator. This device, he says, is easier to engineer than an explosion device.

It has long been assumed that if Iran acquires the bomb, then Saudi Arabia and other states in the Middle East will also try to win it, causing a nuclear weapon race.