OK, only the most blind, ignorant idiots do not believe that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapon capability.
The defenders of the Islamic (Revolutionary) Repulblice of Iran have goen from claiming that they are not trying to develope nuclear weapons at all to claiming that they are only developing the capability to produce them, not actually producing them.
Let's take a stroll down history lane. Fission nuclear bombs are 1940s technology. Short and medium range ballistic missiles are 1940s technology. Intermediate and inter-continental range ballistic missiles are 1950s era technology. Chemical weapons were invented a century ago. Biological weapons - of some rudimentary sorts - are thousands of years old. Modern biological weapons date from the 1940s.
Obviously, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. However, there are lots of things that are not allowed. Murder has been against the law back to the days of Cain and Abel, for instance.
Yes, the USA (and the rest of the world) has allowed both North Korea and Pakistan to develope and deploy nuclear weapons in the last two decades. The USA was not willing to pay the costs in stopping them from doing so, and no one else was interested in doing so (except for India in the case of Pakistan). Realistically, nuclear weapons are less of a threat than biological weapons. A superbug that got out of control could end the human race. A third world country with a few hundred nuclear bombs could not.
So the question before the world is should we allow Iran to develope and deploy nuclear weapons? Aside from the 13th century mindset of the rulers of Iran, and the anti-semiticism, the anti-Americanism, the anti-civilization aspect of their leadership, their calls for the destruction of Israel, etc etc etc, does America have the right to deny any other country the development of nuclear weapons? Obviously, if we do not stop it, no one will. Sanctions? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
And, if we do allow Iran to develope nuclear weapons, then other nations - Suadi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey - in the middle east will do so as well. Such proliferation may well tip the balance to Japan and Taiwan both deploying nuclear weapons in short order, both have the known capability to do so. And if everyone else has them, then Argentina and Brasil may resurrect their moribund nuclear weapons programs. In Europe, most nations have the technology and the resources to produce nukes in short order. Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland (rumored to already have the components stockpiled), Poland, Ukraine, Netherlands, and others could all produce a nuclear weapon within a year.
South Africa had a nuclear weapons capability more than 30 years ago. It would take a few years, but they could resurrect it as well.
And then the neighbors of these countries would feel the need to start their own nuclear or WMD programs.
One thing that this means, for sure, is that the USA has to get off the dime and start really putting effort into our hemispheric defenses against both cruise and ballistic missile defenses. It is not a panacea, as nukes can always be snuck into a country ( I could detail six different ways right off the top of my head that do not involve missiles) but those are all time consuming operations, not the push of a button by a single mad man dictator.
The question has arisen - particularly in view of the Israeli potential to strike Iran to limit their nuclear ambitions - is how it would be possible to stop an Iranian nuclear weapons push. Israel lacks the non-nuclear capability to stop Iran permanently from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has learned from the Israelis strikes at both Iraq and Syria to stop their single site development. (The Syrian strike reportedly also took out materials sent there from Iraq). Iran has spread its nuclear infrstructure broadly across the much larger country, and buried key facilities deep underground. Israel lacks both the massive ground penetrator bombs and the large bombers to deliver them to make a comprehensive strike to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons program successful via an aerial bombardment. The USAF has that ability. Israel has the ability to use nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, however that would also involve destroying much of the Iranian nation, with an estimated 10 million Iranian civillians being killed as well. Not exactly a palatable situation. (Of course, Israel has the ability to destroy all of Iran, and kill 90% of all Iranians, if they wanted to do that. But the Israelis do not think that this will deter the Mullahs and their holocaust denier President from launching WMD at Israel and eradicating Israel.)
As a slight side bar, one small yield nuclear warhead at the Aswan dam would unleash a flood that would eradicate more than 80% of Egypt's population, and 95% of their industry. Half a dozen nukes into Saudi Arabia would destroy that nation permanently. No one in the middle east believes that Israel would go down without taking everyone else with them. And by most measures, the middle east is the most urbaized centric area on Earth. If I were Turkey, at this point I would stop trying to piss off Israel for the benefit of domestic politics, and instead go back to being a friendly neutral.
So back to the question, should the USA do something about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Sanctions not only do not work, they have been proven not to work. (We'll pinch you, but not stop you). Does the USA have the capability to militarily stop Iran?
Yes - in various ways -
1) Outright invasion. Yes, we can defeat the Iranian armed forces and occupy the nation. It would be an expensive, bloody, and nasty war. And the occupation would be worse.
2) Just bomb and nuke the hell out of the Iranian nuclear facilities. Probably Iranian casualities - about half a million, with another half a million later from radiation fallout and various other things. The plan would be to destroy - by whatever means it took - all of the widespread Iranian nuclear infrastructure. And it would involve follow up strikes to hit areas we did not know about in the original strikes. And yes, it would involve some types of atomic weaponry to do it right, since some of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure is deliberately buried too deeply to be destroyed by conventional weaponry. Other nuclear facilities are placed inside of cities to maximize the collateral damage if they are struck.
3) Conventional bombing and EMP strikes. There now exist a variety of EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse) weapons that are non-nuclear. Several countries have these. However, the non-nuclear versions are of limited range and capability. This type of campaign, and it would be a campaign not a single srike, done and over with, would entail massive collateral damage to teh infrastructure of Iran. Powergrids, water systems, fuel distribution systems, food distributions, and such would end up going down. And Iran lacks the capability to put them back in operation in a timely matter. The total number of Iranian deaths would very likely be much more than option #2. But it would be a non-nuclear depacitation of the Iranian nuclear program.
One side benefit of this is that by using EMP and conventional bombing, we could destroy the Iranian capability to launch missiles at our forces and at our allies in the area. We could - properly planned and executed - eliminate the Iranian ability to more than partially interdict the Straits of Hormuz through anti-shipping missiles or mines.
Another side effect is that probably the Iranian government would cease to exist as such.
This would not prevent Iranian backed terrorists, sleeper cells in the USA and Europe, and their Intel/special forces/terrorist operations around the world from taking actions against the US, Western Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and whomever else they felt like lashing out at. And Iran is known to have many agents both in the USA and the Western Hemisphere. And Iran has a known biological weapons capability.
Achmenjenidad is a known madman. He is also the leader of the government of Iran. Iran is known and proven to be supplying weapons and training to terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq that are killing American servicemen. Under international law, that is more than sufficient reason to declare war against them.
Bill Clinton decided not to take away the North Korean atomic weapons capability because he was presented with a Pentagon study that said the USA would lose an estimate 29,000 dead soldiers. George Bush decided not to take action against the Pakistani nuclear program, and to pressue India not to start a nuclear war with Pakistan, because the USA needed Pakistan's support in our war in Afghanistan.
In some ways, this entire issue is reminiscent of the old debate about whether it would have been moral to go back in time and assassinate Hitler back when he was a failure of an artist in Vienna back in the 1920s.
What are your thoughts?
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IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability
By Joby Warrick, Updated: Sunday, November 6, 6:11 PM
Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.
Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.
The officials, citing secret intelligence provided over several years to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the records reinforce concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 — when, U.S. intelligence agencies believe, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to release a report this week laying out its findings on Iran’s efforts to obtain sensitive nuclear technology. Fears that Iran could quickly build an atomic bomb if it chooses to has fueled anti-Iran rhetoric and new threats of military strikes. Some U.S. arms-control groups have cautioned against what they fear could be an overreaction to the report, saying there is still time to persuade Iran to change its behavior.
Iranian officials expressed indifference about the report.
“Let them publish and see what happens,” said Iran’s foreign minister and former nuclear top official, Ali Akbar Salehi, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Saturday.
Salehi said that the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is “100 percent political” and that the IAEA is “under pressure from foreign powers.”
‘Never really stopped’
Although the IAEA has chided Iran for years to come clean about a number of apparently weapons-related scientific projects, the new disclosures fill out the contours of an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected. Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming — though at a more measured pace — after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former IAEA official who has reviewed the intelligence files.
“The program never really stopped,” said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The institute performs widely respected independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world, often drawing from IAEA data.
“After 2003, money was made available for research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were hidden within civilian institutions,” Albright said.
U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Iran’s leaders have not decided whether to build nuclear weapons but are intent on gathering all the components and skills so they can quickly assemble a bomb if they choose to. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear activities are peaceful and intended only to generate electricity.
The IAEA has declined to comment on the intelligence it has received from member states, including the United States, pending the release of its report.
But some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal reports. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.
“The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,” Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.
Key outside assistance
According to Albright, one key breakthrough that has not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as a R265 generator. The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell that is lined with pellets of high explosives and electrically wired so the detonations occur in split-second precision. The explosions compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, Albright said.
According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.
Danilenko’s role was judged to be so critical that IAEA investigators devoted considerable effort to obtaining his cooperation, the two officials said. The scientist acknowledged his role but said he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects, the sources said.
There is no evidence that Russian government officials knew of Danilenko’s activities in Iran. E-mails requesting comment from Russian officials in Washington and Moscow were not returned. Efforts to reach Danilenko through his former company were not successful.
Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work — some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say. Additional help appears to have come from the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose design for a device known as a neutron initiator was found in Iran, the sources said. Khan is known to have provided nuclear blueprints to Libya that included a neutron initiator, a device that shoots a stream of atomic particles into a nuclear weapon’s fissile core at the start of the nuclear chain reaction.
One Iranian document provided to the IAEA portrayed Iranian scientists as discussing plans to conduct a four-year study of neutron initiators beginning in 2007, four years after Iran was said to have halted such research.
“It is unknown if it commenced or progressed as planned,” Albright said.
The disclosures come against a backdrop of new threats of military strikes on Iran. Israeli newspapers reported last week that there is high-level government support in Israel for a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
“One of the problems with such open threats of military action is that it furthers the drift towards a military conflict and makes it more difficult to dial down tensions,” said Peter Crail, a nonproliferation analyst with the Arms Control Association, a Washington advocacy group. “It also risks creating an assumption that we can always end Iran’s nuclear program with a few airstrikes if nothing else works. That’s simply not the case.”
Special correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.
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