I’ve argued for a while that Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons are almost certainly ongoing, but that we had a reasonably long runway before the threat became – wait for it – imminent.
That may not be the case:
The U.N. atomic agency found traces of highly enriched uranium on equipment from an Iranian site linked to the country’s defense ministry, diplomats said Friday, adding to concerns that Tehran was hiding activities aimed at making nuclear arms.
The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential information, said the findings were preliminary and still had to be confirmed through other lab tests.
Initially, they said the density of enrichment appeared to be close to or above the level used to make nuclear warheads. But later a well-placed diplomat accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was below that, although higher than the low-enriched material used to generate power and heading toward weapons-grade level.
Still, they said, further analysis could show that the find matches others established to have come from abroad. The IAEA determined earlier traces of highly enriched uranium were imported on equipment from Pakistan that Iran bought on the black market during nearly two decades of clandestine activity discovered just over three years ago.
So now we have a more interesting and sudden problem. Note that the facts are asserted and not yet proven, so we’ve got a small bridge to cross before we get to a conclusive answer.
I don’t think it fundamentally changes the dynamic of what we need to do; but I do think that the responses to this in London and Paris are going to very much worth watching.
Sigh. The headline is typical — I can’t think of a single word like “innumeracy” but meaning “scientific illiteracy”. “Uranium”? I found some in New Mexico! Alert the media! Headlines, feh.
One of the important humint (human intelligence) heuristics is “Why is this person telling me this”? George Jahn, his AP editor(s) and unnamed “diplomats” are the persons. Of course certain parties are going to make the unfalsifiable assertion that one or more of these diplomats are tools of BushCo. As Bill Buckley would intone: The questions becooooome, what is a preponderance of evidence, and what is a measured response to same?
I’m not sure what *any* response from Paris would really mean: vide their change-up re Iraq. Tough talk about “Resolution 1441”:http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm , followed by (I paraphrase) “there are no circumstance under which military action would be justified”.
BTW, tangentially related to my previous paragraph, “here’s a refresher list”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect2.html of some of the reasons OIF happened that don’t have to do with oil or Bush’s daddy, as far as I can tell.
So let me spitball this back to you: what do you, dear author, think the responses from London and Paris are likely to really mean, as they occur and evolve?
A.L.,
Do you recall the Telegraph story from March about the mullahs cutting down thousands of trees because the IAEA had found suspicious uranium samples in leaves from trees in a Tehran park? Here’s the link and an excerpt:
Diplomacy here is just a charade. The mullahs are going for nuclear weapons and only force will stop them.
If Iran was farther away, why act provocative? Why not act “Who Me?” and act non-threatening, since your exposure time to someone actually doing something is much longer?
Instead I see a hyper agressiveness; a “call to Islam” in preparation to attack, and otherwise needless provocation. I think Iran already has some nukes, is ramping up production of others, and will strike very soon, within a year or less.
Nothing else seems to fit their actions.
Sadly it will take a strike before the vast majority of proles who populate our Congress take note and realize the threat.
We were given an opprotunity on 9/12 to drop the status quo when it came to our security. Alas, it seems almost certain that history will have to repeat itself and my biggest worry is that instead of 3,000 it will be 300,000 who pay for the ignorance of our leaders.
#1 from Nortius Maximus:
>Sigh. […] “Uranium”? I found some in New
>Mexico!
How highly enriched was your NM find?
As has been mentioned before, it is the industrial scale enrichment line itself that is the weapon. The assembly of the bomb is the least significant step.
We can know when the line exists, but we can’t know exactly when it will produce enough for a weapon.
#7 Passing By:
My point was that “Enriched” appears nowhere in the headline, only in the lede. It’s lame journalism.
Roughly like a headline reading “Wrought iron found in junkyard”, where they only mention the iron was contaminated with Cobalt-60 later on.
And the uranium I found in New Mexico was alleged to have been enriched. I couldn’t get a sample for assay. It was behind glass in a back room at a museum.
Err oops. #7 above s/b #5. Apologies.
How about this theory. Iran is surrounded by Afghanistan and Iraq, and the MSM aside, things are going well in Iraq in the sense that the Iraqi Army is emerging as a capable power. Maybe things really aren’t going Iran’s way, and when backed into a corner, bluster is the only weapon you have.
If Iran were really that far along, why aren’t they keeping quiet about it? Yes, America took only 4 years to get the Bomb, but the first you heard about it is when it went off. Did FDR go hopping up and down to Germany and Japan going, yessiree, we go these huge plants in Tennessee and in Idaho, and in a couple years time you are all going to be sorry?
Armed Liberal: “Note that the facts are asserted and not yet proven, so we’ve got a small bridge to cross before we get to a conclusive answer.”
I think that’s a large bridge. We need more facts.
I think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad using “the phrase that pays” in his eighteen page letter to George W. Bush kicks the legs from under any serious doubt about Iran’s actively hostile and deadly intentions with the bomb, but on capabilities we are still in the dark.
#2 from Tom Holsinger – the long link that ignores the site formatting rules – please don’t do that.
Joe, can you fix that? Thanks. [Fixed–Marshal Festus.]
RBT agrees with Tom and Jim.
As I said before in the great discussion here at WOC, Iran is on a role towards Armageddon.
President MAD and his religious mentor, Yazdi, are “Twelfers” who believe the 12th Imam will return shortly. President MAD is consolidating power by installing other Twelfers in position of power, displacing other more moderates if there is such a thing in Iran. They will nuke Israel in a heartbeat if it will hasten the return of the 12th Imam. This is rational and logical from their warped sense of reality.
Are we reliving 1938 all over again? Will we act this time before another Hitler can bring Evil into the world again?
It’s time to call a spade a spade. This is a war between Good vs. Evil. This enemy must be destroyed and its ideology of hate and Evil must be wiped from the face of the earth.
RBT
Spook86 at In From The Cold weighs in on this “new” discovery:
A Disturbing Find
More troubling, the IAEA sources suggest that the highly enriched sample may have come from equipment removed from Iran’s Lavizan-Shian Research Center. Tehran leveled that complex in late 2004, apparently to hide nuclear weapons research that was reportedly taking place there. To cover its tracks from the IAEA (and western intelligence agencies), Iranian crews tore down several buildings at Lavizan and even removed topsoil from the site.
[…]
Lavizan-Shian has been previously described as a “repository” of nuclear-related equipment. But the massive “deconstruction” job at that site in 2004 suggests that other activity may have been occurring as well. The facility was reportedly affiliated with an Iranian university that has long been active in Tehran’s nuclear program.
A worst-case scenario (based on the IAEA discovery) would suggest that Iran’s nuclear enrichment efforts were well advanced in 2004, and that Iran has shifted its enrichment work to other sites. U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have long suspected that Iran has covert nuclear facilities; the existence of such sites would have allowed Iran to raze Lavizan, while continuing to enrich weapons-grade uranium at secret complexes. A recent Israeli assessment–delivered by the Mossad chief in Washington two weeks ago–reiterates that claim. A more advanced enrichment program, producing uranium of weapons-grade quality, would allow Iran to field nuclear weapons sooner than expected.
[…]
Read More Here
Remove the “[]” to fix the link.
http://formerspook. [blogspot].com /2006/05/disturbing-find.html
So the current regime wants nuclear weapons. From my understnading, they definitely, positively, no-doubt-in-anyone’s-mind have the centrifuges to enrich uranium.
It is a question of whether or not they will enrich uranium to weapons grade. Some evidence that needs to be verified indicates that they either have or are on the way. Obviously we should verify this.
If Iran gets nuclear weapons, will we go to war? I think we should. Devestating, total war.
Will it generate antipathy in domestic Iranian populations who might be sympathetic to us? Highly likely. But their sympathies and their antipathies are inneffective. Similar consideration aren’t even on the horizon of the Iranian govenrment regarding exploding a nuke in a Western power.
Imagine a network of coreligionist powers with nuclear weapons. I don’t even think anyone doubts that they would initiate an unprovoked first strike. There are no checks for that.
Few believe that they would operate in good faith. Some might, but not many. The only assurance that we would have of their neutrality is if they know they will die the next day: same deal we had with Russia and China.
But that only works with Iran the state as the initiating agent. What happens if an Iranian faction with access to nuclear material slips some to a non state agent? A nuke goes off and Iran the state gets to act offended and arrest twelve people, sentencing them to life in prison. And then a delay on a healthy, war of denial to protect our people and allies.
I haven’t seen anything to tell me that the current power factions in Iran won’t use nukes offesively.
#13 Blair
MAD policies won’t deter President MAD and his followers. They live in the afterlife. They will die for their cause. This is the same nuttiness that drives the Islamofascists homocidal bombers these are not acts of desparation but fulfillment of religious prophesy.
They are no different than David Koresch, Jim Jones, and the new fanatic of the disavowed Morman sect that may be hold up in the temple in Texas.
I keep telling myself that I’m just paranoid about Iran’s motives and objectives, but then again, even us paranoids have real things to fear…
This is all like some danse macabre, in which Iran is leading us across the dance floor to a destination we don’t want to reach, but because we have no choice but to dance, that destination is unavoidable.
I cannot help but think that something changed in Iran a year or two ago, and it wasn’t just a change in leadership. For so many years Iran relied on bluster and deniable agents (e.g. Hezbollah) in their actions against Israel and the West. But now… it is as though they have placed a chip on their shoulder and are daring us to knock it off. Why are they suddenly so sure of themselves? Can it be just their religeous faith? Or is there something more sinister awating all of us if someone dares to take a swipe at that chip?
Here’s a hypothesis… Sometime, perhaps 2 or 3 years ago, perhaps a few more, Iran managed to acquire one or two nukes. At the same time, they have continued on a massive and secret development program that would allow them to build their own nukes using the others as prototypes. Within the past year or so, they have finally enriched enough weapons-grade material (perhaps starting from high-quality reactor fuel rather than from ore) that they have taken that next step to build their own weapons. What are the implications of this?
First, if Iran already had a couple of nukes, why have they not yet attacked Israel? Perhaps because they had only one or two, and in spite of their rhetoric feared the massive retaliation that would ensue, and that one or two nukes probably would not actually accomplish their goal of destroying Israel. And now, if they feel they are finally strong enough to accomplish their goal, they may feel the price is worth paying.
Second, if Iran feels strong enough to accomplish their goal, why haven’t they actually attacked? Perhaps it is because they have a hangup about being seen as the “agressor” in this situation. Especially if they believe in an apocalyptic final battle scenario, they may feel they can’t get their ticket to paradise punched if they are the agressors/instigators of this final conflict. More to the point, if an Iranian attack were to kill a large number of innocent muslims, it probably would be permissable only if that attack could be considered (in their minds) a legitimate response to an attack from the West.
Third, delivery of the weapon. Does Iran have this capability? In spite of their bluster, I don’t think that the Iranians have the operational missle systems capable of reliable delivery of a nuke. Nor do I think their Air Force is capable of such an operation. But there are other ways. One could be a disguised civilian cargo or passenger jet on a suicide mission. Either slip the weapon into the cargo hold in place of real cargo, or do a very discreet switch operation with a bonafide flight (taxi the plane into a hanger for a quick adjustment, and another that looks just like it appears out the other hanger door). Or possibly the slow-boat container ship… Or possibly (though unlikely) Iran has actually somehow deployed a working weapon (in pieces to be reassembled in-situ) to its destination.
If the hypothesis is correct, there is little we can do to stop the process. Unless we simply turn our backs on Iran, Iraq, Israel, and the rest of the Middle East, the Iranians can just keep increasing the level of provocations until something happens and we are forced to respond in a manner that Iran considers to be an attack. And at that point all restraint is gone.
Yes this is a paranoid scenario. But there are some things even paranoid people should worry about. Is it likely? Well, probably not, but the consequences of it being true would be pretty horrible. And the Iranians have done absolutely nothing that reassures us.
And finally… just to make this a little scarier, there are lots of “WMDs” besides nukes. And those would be much easier to predeploy in anticipation of their use.
And as I look back on this little paranoid rant of mine, I can’t say that I really know what to believe. But we cannot write off the Iranian regieme as being crazy or irrational just because they may have motives we do not comprehend.
Just my $.02
DaveK
#15 DaveK
You’re sending chills down my spine. Yes, why have the Mullahs change their tactics from playing the EU negotiations game which was working well for them to one of open defiance?
They are holding something we don’t know about. They may already have a nuke or two or someother WMD.
Some in the Blogos have noticed a similarity in President MAD’s letter to Pres Bush to passages in the Koran re a last msg to your enemy to convert before striking.
Darn now I can’t go back to sleep.
RBT
#15 Blair
HT PJM
So more to lose sleep over.
Don’t miss the link to the Atlantic’s war gaming on Iran.
RBT
Saber Rattling?
Where are those carriers headed?
PJM in Barcelona
May 12, 2006 9:15 AM
Steve Soto at The Left Coaster points to some indications that he views as the US Navy starting the pre-positioning of assets for a June attack against Iran.
Link
HT LGF via Dadmanly
Here’s the link to the thought line on President MAD’s letter as a precursor to waging war.
#2 Tom
Any chance the Mad Mullahs got their hands on a Russian thermo nuke for an AQ ship launched EMP attack off our coasts?
More shivers. Time to pull the covers over my head and try to go back to sleep.
RBT
*****
An Islamic Declaration of War
What’s the best way to summarize the letter from Iranian President Ahmadinejad to President Bush?
I’m afraid that Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs nails it on the head, headlined An Islamic Declaration of War:
[…]
Read More
Remove the “[]” around blogspot to fix the link
http://dadmanly. [blogspot] .com/2006/05/islamic-declaration-of-war.html
Davek, yes, you’re being paranoid. But you have a point.
The iranians arn’t acting like they’re afraid we’ll attack them unilaterally, and they ought to know we’re about to do that.
They have every reason to think we’re about to bomb all their military facilities and all their dual-use economic facilities (which includes all their power plants and phone exchanges) and their top government buildings as well as every place we think high government officials or mullahs might be hiding. They ought to be afraid. We’re the strongest military force that’s ever been. There’s nothing they can do to stop us from hitting them as hard as we want, as long as we want, and we’ve been telling them we’re about to do just that. And they don’t act afraid.
Your idea about nukes is not plausible at all. Say we attack iran, and then they nuke 4 israeli cities, and then the israelis nuke 40 iranian cities. No, they don’t think it’s worth it. Nobody but palestinians is that interested in israel. Sure, israel is an affront to arab pride. Sure, they want it gone. But it isn’t that central. Israel certainly isn’t that central to their religion. Ask any 50 muslim authorities whether it’s worth ten muslims dying to kill one jew and you might _possibly_ get a debate but I strongly doubt you’d get a majority saying it is.
Now, say we attack iran and iran sets off ten nukes in US ports, and we kill 98% of the iranians in iran. Is that what they want? The idea isn’t to get killed off bringing the 12th imam back, the idea is to be there to greet him. Not to be martyred just before things get interesting.
But no matter how much we bully them they don’t act afraid. Why not?
Maybe they do have some nukes, and they think they can tell when we’re about to attack. And just before we attack they tell us they have nukes and we’d better not attack, and we don’t attack. Then we look foolish, and nonproliferation is completely dead. But that’s an awful risk to take, just to make us look bad.
How about this. Bush announced his Axis of Evil about 4 years ago. That’s a lot of time for everybody to get ready for him to attack iran. Nobody really likes the USA to be the world’s only superpower except us, but nobody’s ready to oppose us. Say that russia and china together arranged a secret treaty with iran. Either just before or just after we attack, both russia and china announce that an attack on iran is an attack on them and they will declare war unless we back down. Would Bush risk WWIII for his right to bomb iran? I hope not.
Say we get the ultimatum half an hour after the bombing starts, and we stop it within the hour. We look like an ex-superpower. We look like an agressor nation. We agree to pay iran reparations for the damage we caused. Our power is consierably checked — before October 2006 we thought we could attack anybody we wanted, after October 2006 we clearly can’t. It’s a big win for russia, china, and iran. Terrible propaganda defeat. Most of the world press would run it as a heroic victory against our unprovoked aggression. A victory for humanity.
Is that the plan? I dunno. But they’ve had 4 years to make a plan, along with whichever US enemies or competitors they choose to cooperate with.
If this was their plan, what could we do about it? We could try to be friendly and see if they’re willing to reduce tensions. Nothing to lose by trying, except they might take it as a sign we’ll back down and they can push for concessions. But if this *is* the plan they won’t respond to friendly, they’ll keep egging us into attacking them. Right after we invaded iraq and had such a tremendous victory we publicly told iran they were next. They aren’t likely to believe friendly from us, not enough to call off an agreement with russia and china.
And it would look bad to back down. Probably the best Bush could do is keep threatening them and acting like he’s about to attack for *three years* until it turns into somebody else’s problem.
#19 J. Thomas
I will grant that my hypothesis is not “likely,” but I think you are making the mistake of doing the confrontation calculus using a very western paradigm. First, we are dealing with a regieme that seems to truly believe that the apocolypse (that is, the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of the next in another plane of existance) will be upon us very, very soon. The state of this world at that time, and the manner of passing from this world to the next matters little to someone who believes this way.
Second, the fundamentalist Islamic world has invested itself heavily in the premise that the Zionists/Jews are the true enemy of Islam. They really do believe that if the yoke of oppression is lifted by elimination of the Jews, they can reachieve the status they held in the world a millenium ago. While the average muslim may not truly believe that elimination of Israel is a realistic goal, the folks in power in Iran do seem to believe so. And the elite may well believe that they can sit out any conflict in the safety of their bunkers, and that the loss of some good muslims (who, by the way, would become martyrs in such a conflict, and would be instantly transported to paradise instead of having to wait until judgement day) is a small price to pay.
Again, I’m not saying that this is the likely scenario, but we can’t ignore it because the downside risk is simply huge.
As far as Iran having a secret pact with Russia and China, that may well be. But remember that Russia is more likely to bluff in a confrontation like that than is Iran. Yes they want to regain their world stature, but they also know that a general nuclear conflict would destroy their society. The Chinese are more troubling, but are likely to limit their meddling to a local conflict, rather than general war. They can afford to lose a fight over Taiwan, but they cannot afford to lose the industrial base they have worked so hard to rebuild. But yes, in the scenario you pose, we could well see a replay of something like the Cuban missle crisis.
Bottom line… we cannot dismiss the Iranians as crazy simply because they don’t think inside the same box that we do. And the way things are shaping up, it will be an ugly scene no matter how it plays out.
Just my $.02
DaveK
AFAIK, Iran acquired several xSoviet nuclear weapons in the early 1990’s, all of which had working safety interlocks such that they could not be detonated without a complete rebuild. Those were mostly useful for research purposes.
Soviet nuclear weapons were designed for cheap manufacture given Soviet production standards – they had a relatively high degree of radioactive impurities in their fissionable triggers and therefore a relatively short shelf-life. Soviet ICBM’s also had relatively short working lives due to their liquid fuel, and the two life cycles worked together to produce the following pattern.
Soviet ICBM’s were pulled off-line after their 8-10 year working lives and placed into reserve. Their warheads were likewise pulled and sent back to the atomic labs for disassembly and recooking of their weapons-grade fissionables, for reuse in newly assembled warheads. The latter was also true of tactical missile and aircraft-delivered warheads. This resulted in a constant parade of nuclear warheads between operational bases and nuclear weapons labs, with consequent major league security issues.
As a practical matter, any remaining Soviet nuclear weapons whose fissionable triggers have not been recooked since 1991 are not likely to detonate at all given the interlock issue, and even given the proper codes would likely produce at most a low-grade chain reaction and detonation of perhaps several hundred tons of TNT equivalent, if that. A more likely result is a really messy radioactive fizzle – they’re effectively true “dirty” radiological weapons.
I do not consider Iran’s possession of former Soviet nuclear weapons to be a threat to anyone. At this point their best use is in research for made-in-Iran, or made-in-North Korea, nuclear weapons.
My personal opinion is that Iran and North Korea have an alliance such that their nuclear weapons capabilities should be viewed as a single unit. I believe it is a serious error to consider Iran’s nuclear weapons program in isolation from North Korea’s. What one knows and can do, the other can do, with the only material difference being local manufacturing capability.
I also believe that Iran has purchased either complete nuclear weapons from North Korea, or the fissonables and components for manufacture of assembled-in-Iran weapons. This includes at least relatively crude implosion-type plutonium trigger weapons. While Iran and North Korea have designs for Chinese implosion-type plutonium missile warheads, provided by the Chinese government as part of its nuclear proliferation attack on the United States, their ability to manufacture those properly is unknown.
I personally believe that at least minimal testing of such warheads is necessary before Iran and North Korea will have effective implosion-type plutonium warheads for delivery by nuclear missile. I believe Iran’s test detonations of such warheads will be attended by hundreds of North Korean nuclear weapons personnel such that those will be joint tests.
Iran and North Korea are also pursuing weapons using U-235 as the fissionables for the triggers. The chief advantage of U-235 weapons is that they can be used for absolutely reliable gun-type triggers (our World War Two “Little Boy” was not tested before use on Japan). Such triggers are extremely wasteful of scarce, expensive, weapons-grade U-235, but they can be used as missile warheads without any testing.
Even on the ballistic missiles (SCUD knock-offs) already possessed by Iran.
My personal opinion is that Iran right now has at least 2-3 implosion-type plutonium warheads courtesy of North Korea, and is in the process of cooking its own plutonium. Those are not suitable for delivery by missile absent testing, and I believe that testing will take place this year – my money is on September or October.
North Korea probably has more than ten such weapons. I repeat, those are at the moment suitable for delivery only by aircraft, ship, or as container cargo.
I believe North Korea already has sufficient U-235 for several gun-type warheads, and that Iran is rapidly cooking its own U-235. My gut feeling is that Iran will have enough U-235 for its first missile warhead this year, again around September or October. How fast it can produce more is the big question.
And we’re going to find out the hard way.
My personal opinion is that it’s a race between Iran’s U-235 production and American attack on Iran,
DaveK, you are resolutely following a line that doesn’t work.
It’s ture the iranians don’t think as we do. It’s also true the russians and the chinese don’t think as we do. At various times we’ve had people say the same things bout them that you say about the iranians.
They said the russian leaders would climb outof their bunkers feeling like they’d won, that they cared more about the victory of international communism than they did about their ownj population.
They said the ruthless chinese leaders had an awful overpopulation problem and would feel like we’d be doing them a favor if we killed off 90% of the chinese.
They were wrong. There’s strong reason to believe that you’re wrong too.
You say we can’t ignore this unlikely possibility because the possible consequences are so bad. But look at the possible consequences of attacking now. Far worse. I don’t think that global thermonuclear war is likely, somebody would probably back down, either us or them. Likely us. You say the chinese aren’t willing to lose their industrial base — would we be willing to lose even, say, DC and San Diego?
If you’re willing to bet that the other guys will back down this time if we take a hard stand, then you actually think closer than you admit to the way you claim the iranians do.
If you’re right then we’re firmly stuck in a mess where anything we do is likely to be wrong. So I suggest we avoid doing anything irrevocable for awhile, and hope you’re wrong. If you’re right we might lose a few cities (plus iran) in a few years due to our inaction, or possibly lose anywhere from a few cities to the whole world immediately due to decisive action. If you’re wrong we might lose nothing from inaction, or possibly lose a few cities or the whole world immediately due to decisive action.
How mcch do you want to bet you’re right?
#22 J Thomas
There is another option. You can be an active player from your keyboard – support the majority of Iranian peoptle to overthrow the ruling Arabic minority, the fanatical male hegemonic Islamofascist theocracy – The Mad Mullahs of Iran.
Read my other comments in the other thread at WOC starting with this one:
LOOSE THE ARMY OF DAVIDS
#22 J Thomas
Ultimately, I agree with you… there are no good choices in this confrontation. And I didn’t mean to imply that we must act on an unlikely possibility just because the consequences are so dire. But when the powers that be do their calculus of confrontation, that unlikely possibility with dire consequences needs to be factored in.
In other words, it is much like that danse macabre, where we are forced to follow the dance to its possibly dreadful conclusion.
Just my $.02
DaveK
bq. I believe North Korea already has sufficient U-235 for several gun-type warheads, and that Iran is rapidly cooking its own U-235. My gut feeling is that Iran will have enough U-235 for its first missile warhead this year, again around September or October. How fast it can produce more is the big question.
bq. And we’re going to find out the hard way.
bq. My personal opinion is that it’s a race between Iran’s U-235 production and American attack on Iran,
Tom,
Then it is a race we have already lost.
There is a reason that Rafi Eitan, former Israeli Intelligence chief, thinks Iran has a uranium gun-tpye bomb and I’ll keep saying this until people believe it or I am proved right by events — it took South Africa *10 years, $250 million and three hundred people to build eight deliverable gun-type fission weapons.*
The details of South Africa’s program were made public, including what they did and how they did it and their whole here to fore secret nuclear supply chain, to the IAEA *in 1994.* Thus Iran had the full details via its membership to the IAEA to a sucessful secret nuclear weapoms program cook book tested and proven effective.
It is *2006* today.
That is _12 years later_ and Iran also had full access to A.Q. Khan’s Chinese cut out nuclear supply network from 1994 through 2001.
Anyone saying Iran doesn’t have nukes has a higher burden of proof than those saying Iran does.
This is what the Federation of American Scientists site says about Iran getting xSoviet Kazakh nukes:
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/91-144.htm
bq. In March 1992 some reports postulated that a few nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan might have been sold to Iran. The reports stated that Iran did not have the codes needed to detonate the weapons but that it might use them to gain design information it needs for its own nuclear weapons programs. Russian Foreign Minister Kozyrev and Kazakh officials consistently denied that nuclear weapons are missing, and U.S. officials stated that the United States has no evidence of such a transfer.
This is from the Free Republic web site (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1578893/posts). It is a consolidated list of all the 1992 transfer reports that Iran got a Kazakh nuke.
Tom Holsinger, A.L.,
Pay close attention to the article link below listing when Iran got the designs for a Chinese uranium enrichment facility.
———-
“Iran does have nuclear weapons”, General Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian Deputy Chief of Staff told journalists, adding: “Of course, these are non-strategic nuclear weapons. I mean these are not ICBMs with a range of more than 5,500 kilometers and more. But as a military man, I see no danger of aggression against Russia by Iran.”
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2002/Jun_2002/iran_has_nuke_6602.htm
———-
Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region.
http://regimechangeiran.blog$pot.com/2005/12/turkey-goss-reportedly-told-ankara.html
———-
According to Iranian government documents in Israel’s possession, Iran received several nuclear warheads from a former Soviet republic during the early 1990s, THE JERUSALEM POST reported.
The documents have been deemed authentic by United States congressional experts and are still being studied in Israel. *_They contain correspondence between Iranian government officials and leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that discusses Iran’s successful efforts to obtain nuclear warheads from former Soviet republics._* The documents appear to bolster reports from 1992 that Iran received enriched uranium and up to four nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan, with help from the Russian underworld.
http://www.fas.org/news/iran/1998/980409-iran2.htm
———-
Despite the fact that the CIA recently reported that Iran was only 10 years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb, *Timmerman said Iran has had the capability to produce the necessary fissile material since 1995.* That’s when China gave Iran the blueprints to build a uranium conversion facility.
*_Timmerman postulated that in the last 10 years, Iran has been able to make enough fissile material for 20 to 25 nuclear bombs._*
http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2005/11/10/news/local/iran1111.txt
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Guiora, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, served for 19 years in the Israel Defense Forces Judge Advocate General Corps. He has negotiated repeatedly with the Palestinians, including the safe passage agreement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Both he and Brauner maintain that Iran, not the Palestinians, present the gravest threat to Israel. Iran has nuclear warheads, scattered in some 20 sites, Guiora said. This makes it difficult to remove them in a single strike, as Israel did by bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981.
http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2006/02/01/news/local/bcover0127.txt
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1992 Iran acquires nuclear weapons “ready for immediate use” from CIS countries, according to the German weekly Focus. The weapons are reportedly “an atom bomb which can be dropped from an airplane and a launcher for missiles with nuclear warheads.”
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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February 1992. The Washington, DC-based Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy newsletter reports Iran is within two months of reassembling nuclear warheads acquired from the former Soviet Union. Iran has hired nuclear scientists from Kazakhstan.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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March 1992. A US Republican task force reports that *_Iran has possessed all of the necessary components to build a nuclear bomb since December 1991._*
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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March 1992. Paul Muenstermann, vice president of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), says that Iran received two of three nuclear warheads and medium-range nuclear delivery systems that are missing from Kazakhstan. Iranian officials and the commander of the CIS Joint Armed Forces reject these claims. Russian General Victor Samoilov, however, who handles disarmament issues for the CIS general staff, admits that three nuclear warheads were missing from Kazakhstan. Also, *_Iran allegedly purchased four 152mm nuclear shells from the former Soviet Union, which were allegedly stolen and sold by former Soviet Army officers._* The Iranian Foreign Ministry denies these allegations. Lt. General Sergey Zalentsov, senior commander of the United Armed Forces of the CIS and deputy-in-charge of all CIS nuclear arms, also rejects the reports. Iran reportedly received the warheads from Kazakhstan through Bulgaria. However, Iran did not receive the necessary launch codes or missiles capable of carrying the warheads.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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US magazine US News and World Report quotes an unidentified high-ranking Russian officer as substantiating a US intelligence report that three short-range nuclear weapons have disappeared from an arsenal in Kazakhstan. The US magazine reports the weapons have been sold to Iran.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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April 1992. The European of London reports that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has said that Iran definitely received two warheads stolen from Semipalatinsk. The report says that the organization selling the weapons had ties to Kazakhstan President Nursaltan Nazarbayev.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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May 1992 Russian television reports that Russian intelligence has told the CIA that two nuclear warheads from Semipalatisk, Khazakhstan, were sold to Iran and another unknown Middle East country with the permission of Kazakhstani President Nazarbayev. *_The warheads are of a capacity ranging from 2 to 5 kilotons._*
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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December 1992, Two Iranian diplomats discuss via telephone the acquisition of four nuclear warheads by Iran from one of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The two diplomats are identified as an Iranian Foreign Ministry official Abdolrahmani, who is in charge of relations with the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, and Iranian Deputy Sirus Nasiri Tabatabai-Kia, who is second in command in the Iranian delegation to United Nations institutions and international organizations in Geneva. *_In the tapped phone conversation between Abdolrahmani and Tabatabai-Kia, which is obtained from an European intelligence service, Abdolrahmani confirms that one of the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union sold four warheads to Iran._* Tabatabai-Kia notes that the purchases “completed their mission in the best possible way.” Abdolrahmani says that the warheads had not arrived because of a problem with transportation, and that he does not know how much the warheads cost because “some other guy arranged the issue of the payment.” In the course of the conversation, the names of Iranian President Rafsanjani’s brother-in-law Hajj Mohsen Rafij, and the Iranian defense minister Akbar Torkan are mentioned in connection with the sale.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1869.html
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March 1993, The Arms Control Reporter reports that by December 1991, *_Iran had imported four nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union, including a nuclear artillery shell, two nuclear warheads that could be launched on Scud missiles, and one nuclear weapon that could be delivered by a MiG-27 aircraft._* The report says that fissile material was exported from Kazakhstan to Iran and the rest of the components were exported from other republics of the former Soviet Union through Turkmenistan. Although the codes to arm the warheads were not provided with the missiles, *_the report says two experts from Russia arrived to bypass arming codes._*
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1870.html
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11 April 1998, Labor MK Rafi Elul says that Israel and the United States have suspected for years that Iran acquired nuclear weapons smuggled from the former Soviet Union. Elul reportedly met with an unknown US source, reportedly with longtime connections to the Israeli government, in March 1998 who *_said that in 1995 she gave both the CIA and Israel Iranian government documents on Iran’s successful efforts to obtain nuclear weapons._*
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1875.html
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Following a series of Jerusalem Post articles saying that Iran acquired nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union, two US Congressmen, Jim Saxton and Bill McCollum, say that they have closely followed Iran’s military programs and that Iran “has obtained nuclear weapons as well as established a ballistic missile command-and-control system to launch them.”
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_1875.html
Then the most reasonable assumption seems to be that Iran has passed from acquisition to exploitation.
I thought Iran would be less aggressive in its exploitation efforts than it seems to be – but then, like George H.W. Bush I thought it likely that Saddam Hussein would back up just enough to avoid the First (American) Gulf War. We’re dealing with another culture here, and its supreme representatives appear to be sane (by their standards, not ours, which does us no good at all) only within a bounded rationality that sets minimum appropriate levels of aggressiveness in general and against infidels very high.
I would have thought the Iranians would have used the bomb to lock in support from all stakeholders in their political system, by resorting to pretty crude blackmail. In other words, everybody who had an agenda that amounted to anything in Iran would get paid off, consolidating the ruling regime, and we would do the paying off (or else), further consolidating the regime by adding to its prestige. Trade deals, free reign for Iranian-backed Islamic terrorism, counting diplomatic coup – whatever somebody wanted, the Iranians would try to get by rattling rockets.
That’s not happening at all. What’s happening is that the Iranians have not clarified their nuclear status, which puts them in a weaker position to cash in straight away, but a better position to push further with nuclear ambitions of the most serious kind. Also, they are going for leadership of the Muslim world, an award that goes to the most fanatical and deadly enemy of the Great Satan. (Even Saddam Hussein, no model of Muslim piety, held that honor at one time, out of pure bloody belligerence.) And they are defining the conflict in ultimate terms that match their ideology perfectly. Eliminationist antisemitism is in full flower, there is no softening of it. The Great Satan has been issued with its ritual invitation to Islam.
I think that corresponds to a (bounded) logic which is way over at the least happy, least friendly end of the range. The Iranians are not just having a fit, and they are not only messing with our heads. Their strategic direction is about as bad as possible, and they are serious.
This is not reassuring.
If things go badly wrong after this, I do not think we will have much excuse to pacify our consciences by saying: “How could we have known or even guessed that the situation was so bad and that it so urgently called for bold and violent action? We are not to blame.” (Not that telling ourselves that “we are not to blame” will save any lives anyway.)
We will never be able to answer the questions from those who come after us: “What on Earth were you people thinking? How could you let this drift? They spent a quarter of a century announcing and even chanting their intentions and showing you that their hatred was real. How could you not believe them, how could you not take them seriously? After Iran started manufacturing nukes, how did you think this would end?“
In the American Civil War a powder ship with 250 tons of explosives was set off in an effort to destroy a fort. It didn’t work.
That is .25 Kilotons of black powder.
In 1864.
One thing that just popped into my mind today was that Iran is running interference for North Korea. Lets say as Tom above does, that Iran and DPRK are working together to develop weapons that will benefit both nations. It would be a prudent course of action, to throw off suspicious minds, for one nation to play the role of “bad cop”, currently that role is being played by Iran and previously it was DPRK.
DPRK has been very quiet and Iran has taken the forefront of the “axis of evil”, all eyes are on Iran and because of this DPRK has been quiet. At the time that DPRK was playing the saber rattle game, Iran was all but absent from the international scene, or playing nice nice with the UN and IAEA.
An odd pattern emerges when you look at both nations. While one starts to ratchet up its rhetoric, the other is silent and visa versa. I think this lends more credibility to the collusion argument. Sure our intel operations will always monitor both regimes, but the media won’t and with that public opinion. If you polled people today they wouldn’t rank DPRK real high on the threat-o-meter but Iran would hit number one, you could say the same thing back in 03, but the roles would be reversed.
DaveK, we don’t have to dance the dance. Unless we want to.
First off, nonproliferation is dead whether we attack iran or not, and whether iran builds nukes or not. The groundrules of the game have changed, and nukes are now both accessible and desirable.
During the cold war, third world nations mostly had no use for nukes. If they got into a dispute there was a strong chance the US would support one side and the USSR would support the other side. Neither would countenance using nukes. Spending gobs of money so you could turn your war into a nuclear war, did not look like a good idea at all.
Now nukes are much cheaper, and nations can’t depend on any superpower’s “nuclear umbrella”. And we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to tell the world that nations which have a few nukes are vastly more important than nations without.
Before, nations could accept some nice bribes to join the NPT, and lose nothing by it. But now their incentives have changed. Nonproliferation is dead regardless what we do to iran. If mexican nukes complicate our diplomacy with mexico, we’ll just have to adapt.
Our recent stand has not been to promote nonproliferation. Our stand has been to deny nukes to nations that are most hostile to the USA, by war-of-aggression if necessary. This goal might be achieved in the short run. But we’re weaker after invading iraq than we were befor. Can you imagine we’ll be stronger after the inevitable invasion of iran than we are now? Any chance we’ll be strong enough after that to invade north korea too? And syria? Is turkey going to stay “on our side”? Pakistan? Brazil? We inevitably develop new enemies, and the way we’re going just now we’re likely to develop new enemies faster than we destroy old ones. And each victory weakens us … not a good method to encourage nonproliferation at all. Cautious nations may feel it’s better to get their nukes _before_ we declare them our enemies.
So if we attack iran we aren’t doing it for nonproliferation. We’re doing it because we want to get iran and we figure it’s worth whatever it happens to cost us.
Now suppose that Trent is right and iran actually has some nukes. Imagine this sequence:
We attack iran.
Iran nukes some of our largest “permanent” bases in iraq.
We nuke iranian cities.
What happens after that? It could go a lot of ways but none of them look any good to me. We’d be worse off than an iran with nukes that we hadn’t invaded. We’d have the satisfaction that iran was even worse off than us, of course.
Suppose we just pretend we’re using diplomacy and wait. Suppose iran gets nukes. That’s bad for whoever is in US office, they come out looking weak, a bunch of crazy people will say they could have attacked and nipped it in the bud. But let’s ignore the domestic politics.
The worst outcome is iran nukes, say, four US cities. That would be very bad. Our proper response then is to nuke 4 iranian cities about the same sizes, and then we ask them if they want another round. They won’t.
The next-worst outcome is they turn responsible. They stop threatening nuclear war (as the chinese did as soon as they got significant nukes). They turn into a responsible regional power that we can’t bully nearly as much as we can now. (We can now?) They interfere in our bullying other places in the middle east. A new regional power is not good for us, but it’s better than getting our cities nuked and it’s better than a lot of the potential outcomes from our unilateral attack on iran.
The least-bad outcome is that iran nukes somebody else in the middle east, either one that nukes them back or else some third party nukes them back. Or maybe nobody nukes them back, the result is the same. The whole world sees just how bad it is when a city gets nuked. We get lots of experimental data about stuff we’ve extrapolated mostly from scale models and mathematics. Everybody with a TV can look at the fallout patterns. The biologists will have a field day. The whole world agrees, “No nukes.”. Iran is disarmed. Sanctions? The whole world is going to agree to whatever it takes. The iranian government will agree or fall, because a giant majority of iranians will agree. There would be lots of consequences beyond that, some of them bad for the USA. But it’s better than US cities getting nuked. Better for us than most of the possible results of our own aggressive war.