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Pouring cold water on the heated Iranian 'nuclear' development
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| Fir3start3r |
There been lots of talk about Iran's achievements but what seems to be missing is what exactly did they realistically accomplish??
Apparently, it's not as bad as the MSM is making it out to be (big surprise)...
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More on Iran
As the war drums beat, it's worth remembering that it's not five minutes to midnight. And likely won't be for the duration of the Bush Administration. I still see this as ultimately a challenge for the next Administration that comes in to power in 2009. That's not to say there won't be complicated diplomacy in and around the UNSC, and perhaps major sanctions and other robust tactics that will be necessary to wield by 2008, say. But I do not see a responsible use of military power before 2009, meaning a strictly necessary one, unless there is a secret (meaning, you know, secret, secret) program the Iranians have fast-tracked, and we have unimpeachable evidence of same, meaning their ability to wield a nuclear weapon within 1000 or so days. I don't see it, and have yet to see any responsible intelligence analyst argue otherwise.
Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.
The official, Muhammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic energy organization, said Iran would push quickly to put 54,000 centrifuges on line — a vast increase from the 164 they said Tuesday that they had used to enrich uranium to levels that could fuel a nuclear reactor.
Still, nuclear analysts called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.
Iran's announcement brought criticism from several Western Nations and to a lesser degree from Russia and China. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for "strong steps" against Iran, using the country's clear statement of defiance to persuade reluctant countries like Russia and China to support tough international penalties. But Russian officials said they had not changed their opposition to such penalties. Nuclear analysts said Iran's boast that it had enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges meant that it had now moved one small but significant step beyond what it had been ready to do nearly three years ago, when it agreed to suspend enrichment while negotiating the fate of its nuclear program.
"They're hyping it," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, a private group that monitors the Iranian nuclear program. "There's still a lot they have to do." Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new Iranian claims "little more than vacuous political posturing" meant to promote Iranian nationalism and a global sense of atomic inevitability.
The nuclear experts said Iran's claim on Wednesday that it would mass-produce 54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted, the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs.
It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.
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More here:
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IRAN: EVERYBODY PLEASE RELAX AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH
CATEGORY: Iran
There. Don’t you feel a little better now? I knew that you would. When in close combat with your political opponent, it’s always a good idea to take a moment to review, revitalize, and relax.
That’s what we’re doing, of course. This “crisis” has not been the doing of the Bush Administration. The blame for jacking up domestic tensions falls entirely and without question on the rabid dog left. Even liberal Democrats (for the most part) have dismissed immediate military action as a chimera. What passes for analysis on left wing blogs and punditry would have us believe that Bush will bomb Iran to take the heat off of the White House due to the Libby scandal, or that Bush will bomb the mullahs in September to rally the country to the Republican standard, or that the President will attack because he sees the end times coming and wants to start Armageddon.
Someone should just dump a bucket of cold water on their pointy heads and tell them to cool off.
The Administration has held no press conferences, no briefings of any kind. They have given measured, careful responses (outside of the President’s apropos characterization of Sy Hersh’s fantasy story about the United States using nuclear weapons in Iraq as “wild speculation) to the notion of military action against the mullahs. Negotiations remain the primary option of this Administration, despite leaks that were 1) meant to let the Iranians know we mean what we say; and/or 2) signal the Europeans and others to get busy at the UN.
Hersh’s dramatic story about disgusted military officers ready to quit if the JCS recommendations included a nuclear option must be taken with a very large dose of salt. Mr. Hersh has penned some of the most curious (and that is me at my most charitable) volumes that purport to be “fact based” in the last quarter century. The Dark Side of Camelot was almost universally condemned as a scandal mongering load of crap, so much so that one wag referred to it as “The Second JFK Assassination.”
And who could forget The Target is Destroyed, a book about the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 where Hersh gave the Soviets a virtual pass in shooting down the civilian airliner all because the US had a spy plane in the vicinity and the Soviets mistook the clear civilian markings on the KAL 747 for our intelligence platforms being flown in converted 707’s. (The pilot who shot down 007 pleaded with his superiors, telling them it was in fact a civilian airliner. So much for mistaken identity).
In fairness, Hersh has done some first class work in exposing aspects of the My Lai massacre as well as a mostly factual account of Henry Kissinger’s tenure as the doyen of American foreign policy. But his otherwise excellent book The Samson Option was criticized for poor sourcing and many of Hersh’s articles in recent years have depended almost exclusively on sources who remain anonymous. In effect, Hersh expects us to take him at his word, his reputation being enough to satisfy our questions regarding the viability of his claims.
As a man of the left, he can get away with it. Which brings us back to the current meltdown by the left about our military planning to take out Iranian nuclear capability. Despite President Ahmadinejad’s bluster about Iran joining the nuclear club, the “achievement” of Iraqi scientists is so rudimentary and preliminary to building a bomb that one wonders why he even bothered to announce it. The left leaning blog Arms Control Wonk posted a series of articles on the Iranian nuclear program and gave a reasonable timetable for a crash program by the mullahs to make an atomic device:
Assemble 1,300-1,600 centrifuges. Assuming Iran starts assembling centrifuges at a rate of 70-
100/month, Iran will have enough centrifuges in 6-9 months.
Combine centrifuges into cascades, install control equipment, building feed and withdrawal systems, and test the Fuel Enrichment Plant. 1 year
Enrich enough HEU for a nuclear weapon. 1 year
Weaponize the HEU. A “few” months.
Total time to the bomb—about three years.
The difference between what the Iranians achieved yesterday – a successful “cascade” involving 164 centrifuges – and what would be necessary to enrich enough uranium for one single bomb is like the difference between a tricycle and an Indy racing car. In order to weaponize enough uranium for a single bomb, the Iranians would need nearly 10 times the number of centrifuges (that they probably do not have at the moment) spinning at nearly 700 times a second, all working together flawlessly for many months, night and day, before the uranium was enriched not by the measly 3.5% the Iranians claimed yesterday but by at least 80% which most experts say would be the absolute minimum enrichment threshold for the uranium to achieve critical mass and detonate.
The technical challenges for such an operation would tax the labs and brainpower of most First World countries much less the Third World nation of Iran. It took the greatest brains on the planet at the time of the Manhattan Project nearly 3 years and what in today’s dollars would be nearly $75 billion to solve many of the technical problems involved in constructing an atomic bomb. While it is true many of these technical challenges have since been leaked into the public domain, there remain several key steps that are classified.
At the same time, our intrepid spies at the CIA are almost certainly dreaming when they claim as they did in a National Intelligence Estimate that the Iranians are a decade or more away from achieving their nuclear ambitions. The Israelis are under no such illusions as they also have gone on record (by way of background briefings) saying that Iran is much closer to that dangerous goal; 3-5 years being their timetable.
Of course, this timetable does not take into account some “shortcuts” the Iranians could use:
* Purchasing highly enriched uranium from a third party
* Acquiring nuclear weapons elsewhere
* Getting the requisite technical assistance from experienced foreign nuclear scientists.
The first two of these shortcuts are highly unlikely given how closely nuclear material is monitored around the world. And while we’ve been hearing for years that nuclear weapons from Russia have been on the market in all sorts of manifestations including so-called “suitcase” bombs, nuclear artillery shells, and even old short range missiles with nuclear warheads, the fact is not a one has been used. And given how closely Iran has been watched by both Americans and Israelis, it seems highly unlikely the mullahs have been able to purchase a ready made weapon on the black market.
The third shortcut is much more likely. There are indications that the Iranians have already gotten help from Pakistani scientists as well as North Korean technicians. Such assistance could considerably shorten the time for the Iranians to develop a nuclear capability.
The point I’m trying to make is that if we know all this, so does the Administration. This is why the UN is still a viable option and, if necessary, multi-lateral sanctions by Western powers against the Iranians. While the Russians and Chinese both oppose such a move, it is probable they would not overtly undermine such sanctions, bringing as it almost certainly will, trouble with their western partners. And since both giants need the west a heckuva lot more than they need Iran, there’s a good chance that any sanctions regime the US and NATO can come up with will have some bite.
The hyperventilating left and the itchy trigger fingers on the right should bear all of this in mind when discussing what to do about Iran. We have some time. Time to carefully build a powerhouse coalition of nations that takes Ahmadinejad at his word when he says he wants to “wipe the State of Israel off the map.” This won’t be accomplished overnight. But the major weaknesses in Iran’s economy as well as a restive population, chafing at 26 years of theocratic rule, could work in favor of the Iranians being forced to abandon their mad ambition to get the ultimate defense against cartoon blasphemy.
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| Marc Summers |
The Iranian president isn't afraid to say what is on his mind. If he says the enrichment is for peaceful/energy purposes only, I honestly believe him.
Anyway, the enriched uranium they were flaunting around was only like 4% or 5% enriched, which can't be used for anything at all. They have alot more work to do in order for the enrichment to be useful. |
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