Israeli intelligence officials now believe that Iran would be unable to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015 at the earliest, up-ending previous assessments of its nuclear program, according to a report from McClatchy.

The report counters prior claims that Iran is nearing a point in its nuclear program where it would be able to race toward developing nuclear weapons should it choose. It has been previously determined by both U.S. and Israeli officials that Iran has made no decision yet to move towards developing such weapons. A previous assessment that Iran would have the potential capability to develop nuclear arms by late 2012 was first pushed back when the IAEA reported that Iran converted large amounts of its 20 percent enriched uranium into a form difficult to enrich further, thus decreasing its overall stockpile.

According to interviews conducted with Israeli military and intelligence officials, and briefings given over the last two months, that capability is now at least two years away, with some placing their estimates as far back as “winter of 2016″:

“Previous assessments were built on a set of data that has since shifted,” said one Israeli intelligence officer, who spoke to McClatchy only on the condition that he not be identified. He said that in addition to a series of “mishaps” that interrupted work at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian officials appeared to have slowed the program on their own.

“We can’t attribute the delays in Iran’s nuclear program to accidents and sabotage alone,” he said. “There has not been the run towards a nuclear bomb that some people feared. There is a deliberate slowing on their end.”

Israeli officials also noted a widening gap between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements in public and the intelligence reports that he is receiving. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Iran was nearing the crossing of a “red-line” in its nuclear program, a point at which an Israeli attack to prevent the acquisition of a nuclear breakout capability would be inevitable. Speaking before the United Nations in September, Netanyahu warned the General Assembly that the such a threshold would likely be crossed in Spring or Summer 2013.

Instead, an official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry is quoted insisting that the international sanctions placed upon Iran are, in fact, working. “Iran is progressing carefully, and we think that is because of international pressure led by the U.S.,” the official told McClatchy. That assessment lines up with the opinion of Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, who in 2012 said, “[International sanctions are] much more effective than people think and it might change, hopefully it might change behavior patterns if we continue with it.”

This isn’t the first time the Prime Minister has been at odds with his security apparatus over the level of immediate threat that Iran poses to the country. In 2010, Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Ehud Barak attempted to set the military on high alert to attack Iran “within hours if necessary.” That order was shot down by then-intelligence head Meir Dagan and the Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi. Likewise, there are a multitude of current and former Israeli officials on the record as being opposed to strikes on Iran in the near-term.

Netanyahu is currently forming a government after his party’s lackluster performance in last week’s elections. While domestic issues dominated the run-up to the polls, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu party was perceived as holding a more militaristic line on Iran.

Earlier today, news broke that Iran claims to have successfully launched a monkey into space and retrieved it. While the event has been greeted with some mockery, the launch, if it indeed took place, may have been conducted against international law.

Iran’s simian traveler was reportedly launched in an “indigenous bio-capsule” to a height of over 75 miles before being recovered on its landing, according to the Fars state news agency. The launch is being billed by Iran as the prelude to sending humans into space, which they aim to achieve in the next five to eight years. Experts, however, remain skeptical that Iran currently possesses the technology required to send a living thing into space, let alone orbit.

The news of the supposed launch was not well received in Western capitals, however. When asked about “extraterrestrial primates” at today’s State Department press briefing, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland made clear that she could neither confirm nor deny that such a launch had taken place. If it had, though, Iran would be in violation of previous United Nations resolutions:

NULAND: Our concern with Iran’s development of space launch vehicle technologies are obviously well known. Any space launch vehicle capable of placing an object in orbit is directly relevant to the development of long-range ballistic missiles, as well as [satellite launch vehicle] technologies, and they’re all virtually identical and interchangeable. Just to remind, U.N. Security Council 1929 prohibits Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

The resolution in question, passed in 2010 by the U.N. Security Council, contained the most comprehensive international sanctions package on the Islamic Republic to date over its continuing uranium enrichment. Among the clauses in the text of the resolution the full ban on development and testing of ballistic technology cited by Nuland.

Today’s response by the United States to the possible space launch echoes that of then-State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in 2008. “The kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for a long-range ballistic missile,” McCormack said at the time. Adding to concern about Iran’s claim is the announcement on Iran’s PressTV today that new short, intermediate, and long-range missiles will be revealed early next month.

If confirmed, Iran’s launch today could result in further action by the Security Council, much as was recently taken against North Korea. The Council last week approved a resolution tightening existing sanctions on North Korea following a “satellite launch” in Dec. 2012 that Council members said was actually a test of ballistic missile technology. “This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its flagrant violation of its obligations under previous resolutions,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said after the resolution’s passage. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. was unable to immediately respond to inquiries about whether similar measures are being considered against Iran.

Several Republican Senators voicing their concern about Secretary of Defense-nominee Chuck Hagel’s stance on nuclear weapons appear to be doing so without knowing much about what Hagel truly believes about nuclear weapons.

Last week, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, citing Hagel’s ties with the group Global Zero — which advocates for a world free from nuclear weapons — as part of his opposition to the former Senator’s nomination. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the newly minted ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, brought up the same point in his questioning of Secretary of State-nominee Sen. John Kerry.

“Typically, there’s a tension. The Defense Department presses for weaponry and making sure that our country is safe,” Corker said at the time. “The State Department presses for nuclear arms agreements and reductions. And so in the event this person is confirmed, that balance is not going to be there.”

Those worries were echoed this morning by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate Minority Whip, appearing on Fox News. Among a laundry list of issues, Cornyn singled out Hagel’s stance on nuclear weapons as being disqualifying:

CORNYN: [...] His embrace of these naive ideas like a nuclear free world which you know is fine to say ‘I hope and I wish and I pray that it would be that way’ but it’s not realistic and it’s naive particularly among the person who is supposed to represent American national security and keep the peace.

Cornyn and Barrasso’s stance on nuclear weapons is not particularly surprising. Cornyn helped lead the charge against the passage of the New START treaty along with John Kyl, his immediate predecessor as Whip. Sens. Cornyn and Barrasso both voted against the nuclear arms reduction deal, with Sen. Corker joining 70 of his colleagues to ratify the bilateral treaty with Russia.

Hagel’s actual positions on the matter can be deduced ahead of his confirmation hearing on Thursday. The Pentagon recently published a paper outlining several “myths” related to Hagel that it sought to correct. Responding to claims that Hagel seeks to weaken the U.S, the paper noted that as Senator from Nebraska “where headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command is located, [Hagel] developed a keen understanding of the critical importance of fielding a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.”

Several of Hagel’s Global Zero colleagues — including Amb. Richard Burt, Gen. (Ret.) James E. Cartwright, Amb. Thomas Pickering and Gen. (Ret.) John J. Sheehan — today issued a statement defending the former senator’s signing onto a report from the group. In their statement, they challenge the claim that their report called for deep, immediate, unilateral cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Instead, the report concludes, “Only a broad multilateral approach can effectively address the multitude of serious nuclear dangers found in other parts of the world.” Likewise, the report, as well as several letters and op-eds signed onto by Hagel, calls for maintaining at present a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear weapons, more than capable of providing deterrence towards other nuclear states.

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