Iran's nuclear shopping list....

Is Obama listening???

Robert Morgenthau, the New York district attorney who is heading a long-term investigation into the Islamic regime's complex web of illicit overseas financial operations, told US senators there was little time left to halt Tehran's atomic weapons programme.

His warning is all the more sobering as Iran last week successfully test-fired a sophisticated medium-range missile that could strike Israel, central Europe and Western forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan with warheads.

"It's late in the game and we don't have a lot of time to stop Iran from developing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons," Mr Morgenthau told a recent Senate hearing. He described Iran's quest as "deadly serious".

His unit's findings also highlight the risks facing President Barack Obama as he hopes to forge improved diplomatic relations with Tehran at the same time as Iran presses ahead with a nuclear programme.

Mr Obama issued a timetable for future talks with Iran for the first time last week, telling the visiting Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he expected to know by the end of the year whether Tehran was making "a good faith effort to resolve differences".

But some senior figures in Israel are now increasingly convinced that the Obama administration believes that a nuclear-armed Iran is inevitable.

Mr Morgenthau's investigation has brought to light a multi-billion-dollar scam under which Iran channelled funds through Western financial institutions to buy banned dual-use materials for its nuclear and missile programmes. Lloyds TSB has already agreed to pay a fine and forfeiture of $350 million (£220 million) for its role in helping to disguise transactions.

The investigation has revealed that the Iranians were negotiating to buy 400 gyrometers, 600 accelerometers and 100 pieces of the metal tantalum - crucial technology for building accurate long-range missiles that could deliver nuclear payloads.

Mr Morgenthau's unit, which has prosecuted several major US white-collar criminal cases, also established that LIMMT, a Chinese company that has long been a major supplier of banned weapons material to Iran, had shipped a long list of weapons-related materials to Iran after skirting international financial sanctions.

The items included 15,000 kgs of specialised aluminium alloy used almost exclusively in long-range missile production; 1,700 kgs of graphite cylinders used for banned electrical discharge machines; more than 30,000 kgs of tungsten-copper plates; 200 tungsten-copper alloy hollow cylinders; 19,000 kgs of tungsten metal powder and 24,500 kgs of maraging steel rods, which are favoured for their superior strength.

"It's the usual list of items that Iran needs for its missile and weapons programmes," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a private security research group. "Whether it's dual use or not is irrelevant. The Iranians are acquiring a glass half-full. They can use that stuff for what they want when they get it."

Mr Morgenthau's office has issued a 118-count indictment against LIMMT and its owner Li Fang Wei for allegedly misusing New York banks via front companies and supplying illicit missile and nuclear technology to Iran. But there are believed to be other targets of the "broad and ongoing" investigation.

His office consulted weapons experts from the CIA, private institutions and universities about what it had uncovered. They were "shocked by the sophistication of the equipment they're buying", he told a hearing of the Senate foreign relations committee.