The top U.S. military official said Sunday he believes Iran has enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Islamic Republic is a long way from having a bomb.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency revised its assessment of Iran’s nuclear capability, saying it was wrong in earlier reports about Iran’s ability to enrich enough uranium to make anuclear weapon.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “We think they do, quite frankly,” when asked Sunday about Iran’s capacity.
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I guess we’ll find out soon enough who is right.
Tags: Iran
Bradley, I think Israel has plans to assassinate the scientists in the program to delay progress, especially as they have no confidence in Obama. They did that with Egypt in the 60s and 70s and they never did get it going. One risk of his policy and his Nazi Director of Intelligence, Freeman, is that an Israel that feels it is alone is far more likely to do desperate things. He is foolish but this is in his modus operandi.
Oh yes, the Odessa File.
They are all right. The Iranians have enough Uranium to make fission bombs. But not immediately. They have a ton or so of 3-4$ LEU for their declared power reactor program that would have to be run through centrifuge cascades to remove the 96% U238 before it can be used for a bomb. They could do this “legally” like the Norks did by leaving the NPT with 6 months notice then enriching (the Norks didn’t go the U route but reprocessed reactor rods for the Pu239).
What we don’t know is where or even if Iran has covert facilities producing HEU or Pu239. As their declared program evolves it becomes easier for Iran to continue (or restart) a covert program. The 2007 NIE stated it would become increasingly likely Iran would restart their covert program absent political progress.
The difficult thing for Israel (or us) is getting the intelligence on what Iran is really doing and where they are doing it.
Another accelerant is the rapidly decaying economic power of the West and the sense in Israel that time isn’t on their side. Military action may become effectively impossible absent something unpredictable.
The Iranians may be relying on the Russians for the engineering and that would allow a better chance for Israel intelligence to track progress.
Doug, do you know anything about travelling wave reactors?
Doug, I may have inadvertently deleted a comment of yours when cleaning out spam. If so, will you repost ?
Here’s more on traveling wave reactors which use mostly U 238.