The Pentagon on Tuesday sought to undermine Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s remarks on Iran saying he was speaking ‘hypothetically’

The Pentagon on Tuesday sought to undermine Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s remarks on Iran saying he was speaking ‘hypothetically’.

Panetta said, during an interview with CBS News, that Iran has reached the point where it can assemble a bomb in a year if not less, he warned that whatever steps deemed necessary to stop it will be taken.

Pentagon spokespersons said Panetta was not suggesting there was new intelligence pointing to secret facilities.

The Pentagon insisted Panetta's view of Iran's nuclear project had not changed and stressed that if Tehran made the decision to produce weapons-grade uranium, it would be detected by UN inspectors who have regular access to the country's facilities.

"Should they make a decision to move to highly enriched uranium, those inspectors would be able to readily detect it," Captain John Kirby told reporters. "And we would have at that point, plenty of time to react on our own."

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the country's intelligence agencies had not changed their view on the state of Iran's program.

Panetta's remarks raised eyebrows among weapons experts who track Iran's program, particularly his reference to the possibility of a secret facility. "It's definitely misleading," David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, told AFP.

The likelihood that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within a year was a "low probability" as any shift to weapons-grade uranium would be exposed by inspectors and ‘Israel’ would almost certainly take military action, he said.
"Senior officials should be more careful," Albright said.

But the Pentagon rejected the criticism. "The secretary is always responsible when discussing important national security matters," press secretary George Little said in an email. "His comments on Iran have been both nuanced and forthright."

Panetta was asked about "prospective and aggressive time lines on Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons - and that is only if Iran decides to move in that direction. "He didn't say that Iran would, in fact, have a nuclear weapon in 2012."