The newspaper said its three-month investigation drew on previously secret reports, international officials, independent experts, Iranian exiles and intelligence sources and uncovered strong evidence that Iran's commercial program masked a military undertaking.

Scientists from Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan, and technology, have propelled Iran's nuclear program much closer to producing a bomb than Iraq ever was, the report said.

The Times pointed out that, although no one is certain when Iran might produce its first atomic weapon, some experts said it could happen in the next two or three years.

A confidential report prepared by the French government in May concluded that Iran is surprisingly close to having enriched uranium or plutonium for a bomb, the paper said, laying out its findings.

The French warned other governments to exercise "the most serious vigilance on their exports to Iran and Iranian front companies," according to a copy of the report provided to The Times by a foreign intelligence service.

The newspaper report said that samples of uranium taken by UN inspectors in Iran in June tested positive for enrichment levels high enough to be consistent with an attempt to build a nuclear weapon.

Tehran also secretly imported 1.8 tonnes of nuclear material from China in 1991 and processed some of it to manufacture uranium metal, which would be of no use in its commercial program but would be integral to weapons production, according to The Times.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist regarded by the United States as a purveyor of nuclear secrets, has helped Iran for years, said the paper quoting an unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence official that "Pakistan's role was bigger from the beginning than we thought."

The daily also said that North Korean military scientists had been recently monitored entering Iranian nuclear facilities.

They are assisting in the design of a nuclear warhead, according to people inside Iran and foreign intelligence officials.

So many North Koreans are working on nuclear and missile projects in Iran that a resort on the Caspian coast is set aside for their exclusive use, the report pointed out.

Russian scientists, sometimes traveling to Iran under false identities and working without their government's approval, are helping to complete a special reactor that could produce weapons-grade plutonium, The Times insisted.

In recent months, Iran has also approached European companies to buy devices that can manipulate large volumes of radioactive material, technology to forge uranium metal and plutonium and switches that could trigger a nuclear weapon, the report said.

European intelligence sources said Tehran's shopping list was a strong indication that Iran has moved to the late stages of weapons development, according to The Times.

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