There is an intense debate over Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and its Uranium enrichment programme which has been discussed in international security conclaves, since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publicly raised concerns about Iran’s nuclear program in June this year.  The IAEA, UN’s nuclear watchdog, has observed that Iran had failed to report ‘certain nuclear material’ and activities as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory.

The IAEA has already issued a ‘non-negotiable’ deadline of 31 October for Iran to provide complete transparency and full disclosure to substantiate its claim that it is not seeking to produce nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian nuclear program. While the most important issue would be ‘to verify the nature and extent of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, according to IAEA Director General Mohamed El Bardei, it is imperative to probe the ‘assistance factor’ in the process of Iran’s quest for nuclear bombs.

Intelligence services in the United States, Israel and Germany have revealed the existence of a clandestine Iranian nuclear program to manufacture weapons but American concerns over Iran's nuclear program intensified in mid-2002, when its intelligence learned of the existence of two secret nuclear facilitiesâ€â€