Iran has sparked off a nuke race in the Middle East - a development that can end with a dozen countries in the region processing nuclear weapons, claims a new report. According to the report, 13 countries in the Middle East, except war-ravaged Iraq, embarked on plans to build new nuclear power plants or to revive the existing ones following Iran's decision to start enriching uranium in 2006. Though all the proposed nuclear programmes are civilian schemes to generate electricity, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in its report that they were acting ‘in the shadow of Iran’ and preparing for Tehran's possible entry into the nuclear weapons club. The report argues that Arab countries may have embarked on civil nuclear programmes in order to acquire the option of building a bomb in the future. "Iran's programme could become a powerful regional proliferation driver, building on regional rivalry, security concerns and one-upmanship. For the time being, these considerations are contributing to a regional surge in interest in nuclear energy. "The question is how to keep this interest confined to purely civilian nuclear programmes," British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday, quoting IISS Chief Executive John Chipman as saying. The IISS has also claimed that Egypt, which already possesses a solid grounding in nuclear technology, could be the first to build a bomb. "If any country in the region were to follow Iran in developing a latent nuclear weapons capability, however, Egypt may be the most likely candidate," Chipman was quoted by the British daily as saying.
