Obviously a lot of smart and well-informed people have been thinking about this. Many, like Juan Cole, think that the Iranians are nowhere close to a bomb; ThinkProgress is slightly less sanguine. They are taking the trouble to make this argument because the US is claiming that it would only take 16 days for Iran to make a bomb. There are all sorts of reasons to disbelieve this particular claim: a history of crying wolf, an apparent misunderstanding of the concept of significant figures… Still, is it more like ten days, or ten years?
Steinn Sigurðsson looks at the problem as a physicist, and isn’t optimistic.
I don’t know Iran; I don’t have access to any classified information on nuclear weapons.
I do know something about physics…First of all, Iran is clearly been working on putting together a full nuclear cycle for about 20 years
That means they want to be able to do it all in-house: mining, enrichment, burning, plutonium extraction, power generation and bomb production.
It is clear that they did the science in the early-to-mid-90s, they tested centrifuges, built small high neutron flux reactors and got small amounts of plutonium extracted.
So, they learned Pu chemistry, what isotopes you get with different burns, and maybe some metallurgy.
They then set up centrifuge halls and played with an AVLIS (laser isotope separator).
They also ordered a 1GW reactor from the russians, and refined uranium oxide (aka “yellowcake”) into both uranium tetrafluoride, uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal.
Supposedly several tons of uranium oxide were processed.Now: there are two ways to make bombs, at the basic level.
Get highly refined uranium-235 metal; or, fairly pure plutonium-239. In kilogram quantities.
U-235 bombs are simple and need not be tested. “A grad student could make one of those”.
Pu-239 bombs are notoriously fickle and are said to need testing (although maybe not so much any more…)
Read the whole thing.
Hofstadter’s Law says “It always takes longer than you think, even when taking into account Hofstadter’s Law.” For nuclear weapons, unfortunately, the word “longer” should be replaced by “shorter.” Historically, we always underestimate the proximity of other nations to full nuclear capability (unless we’re trying to cook up reasons to invade them). I don’t know what to do about it, but there’s every reason to believe that, left to its own devices, Iran will have some sort of bomb sooner rather than later.
Quoting from another forum:
(Re: China/US nuclear agreements, see e.g., http://www.nci.org/d/dh102497.htm)
The NPT is damaged by current events only to the extent that no one has a memory horizon beyond that last two years. Raising the “Bush admin led damage to the NPT” is political spin, and nothing more.
The problem with this whole ‘bomb the crap out of them to let the internal resistance take the government down’ thing is that it appears to be based on hope. If the Iranians pull together in response to an attack (which is hardly impossible) then we strengthen the position of Ahmadinejad (who, don’t forget, isn’t actually in charge of the country in any case). It appears to be the case that even moderate Iranians, who aren’t friends of the current regime, think that Iran has a right to nuclear weapons, and certainly a right to nuclear energy. Whether or not you think that they’ve been hoodwinked or misled or are carried away on a jingoistic wave doesn’t change how they feel, and it is these underlying feelings that will guide their reaction to our actions. Israel and Pakistan, who aren’t what Iranians would describe as ‘friends’, both have nuclear weapons; in that context, it’s not surprising that many Iranians would want to be similarly armed.
Cynthia, that’s one of the few sensible things Bush has said 🙂
Belizean, giving nukes to terrorists to attack the US is just not practical. You also have to look at the cost vs. ”benefit”. You need many billions of dollars to produce just a few nukes…
If Iran’s mindset was really like Bin Laden they would spend their money differently.
E.g. you could think of sending agents to Africa when there is an outbreak of ebola. The ebola virus survives up to two weeks in dead bodies, so it’s possible to collect samples containing the virus and move them to Iran. Their they could let the virus multiply in secret biological laboratories.
An attack with ebola could wipe out a significant fraction of the US population at a fraction of the cost to develop an atomic bomb.
Count Iblis,
With all due respect, you still don’t get it. Ahmadinejad is not the sort of guy who’s going to dispassionately perform a cost-benefit analysis. Being fundamentally medieval in his thinking, he is likely fixated on particular vision of the apocalypse that involves dramatic explosions and a cleansing holy fire (or whatever picture the Koran might paint). He is also likely to believe that no price is too high to ensure that Allah’s will be done.
Even if he were a rational cost-benefit analyzer, he’d probably decide against ebola. It’s just too hard to ensure that the millions of people that you’ve infected do not spread the contagion to unintended places, such as other Muslim countries including your own.
Adam,
The proposal is a revolution supported by bombing, not bombing that is hoped to induce a revolution. There are two possibilities: either most Iranians support the current clerical rulers, or most do not. Judging by the extraordinary degree of oppression to which the clerics must resort in order to retain their power, the latter possibility is far more likely. If true, a revolution will be supported by most. If the revolutionaries make it known that the precision bombing is in support of their efforts and directed by them, it is less likely to cause the backlash that you predict.
No one is attempting to prevent Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons. The effort is to prevent oppressive, terrorist supporting, hatred driven regimes from possessing them. If Iran becomes Belgium or even Cost Rica, few will be concerned about their acquisition of nuclear weaponry.
It’s a mistake of the Federation of American Scientists to host free downloads of all the available bomb-making Los Alamos scientific reports at http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/index1.html
Los Alamos removed them from the internet and from the wayback machine when China got the blueprint for the W88.
While the science should not be secret, the Los Alamos chemical progesses and technical programs for making WWII type bombs should not be so readily available.
While I agree that proliferation should be averted by physical means, and not by head-in-the-sand ‘scientific secrecy’, there is something absurd in having documents like http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00349710.pdf
freely downloadable by anybody. Not all those reports are would speed up Iran’s bomb making, however. For example http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00315644.pdf is just fascinating physics everyone should be aware of (the natural nuclear reactor at Gabon safely confined radioactive fission products for a billion years), and the reports on nuclear weapons effects like EMP are vital for civil defence to be taken seriously against nuclear terrorists, see http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00322994.pdf for EMP from 1962 tests and http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00317067.pdf for computer simulation of the effects of a megaton near surface burst. I think effects and scientific civil defence data should be openly available, not the chemistry of plutonium separation, etc.
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28926
A deal may be possible.
Arun,
That approach worked out really well in North Korea.
Iran is an infinitely more open society than North Korea.
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“shouldn’t the world be wary of fascist leaders that threaten to wipe out millions of Jews? It usually ends up bad, not just for the Jews, but for all of us.”
Well the holocaust denying president of Iran isn’t the actual leadder, the current ayatollah is. Iran consists of an elected congress and president who then elect the supreme leader (usually an ayatollah) and an islamic guidance counsel. Iran’s democracy or government has proven to be problematic, becuase it’s congress actually didn’t want to elect the current supreme leader of Iran and favored a more moderate Islamic leader. The political problems of Iran aside, the ayatollah has issued a law against the development of nuclear weapons. The question here is, is Iran’s government undermining the supreme leader by covertly developing nuclear weapons? or is this as they claim an actual attempt at just nuclear power? Regardless, Iran is a modernized nation with a government that isn’t quite represenative (although most Iranians support nuclear power as a means of weaning Iran from oil based power), but then again neither is the U.S. government right now, but one in which popular support has a say. Iran has the possibility of being a responsible nuclear power, and also with it’s current government, the possibility of being the second country in 100 years to attempt to annihilate the jews. I’m not betting on the later, chances are Iran’s political system will eventually become more moderate especially if their largest trade partners (south korea and japan) put pressure on them.
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A
Did Iran get the US W88 miniaturized warhead design, either directly from China, who “acquired” it in the 1990s, or indirectly through North Korea or elsewhere?
Why it would matter:
The W88 can yield 475 kilotons, making an attack much easier.
For example, you put your warhead on a ship. If the ship gets into New York harbor, Port of Los Angeles, wherever, you can set it off and be assured of destroying most of the city and killing millions.
There’s no worry about getting it through security or positioning it precisely for the desired effect. Plus or minus a mile or two is good enough to stab at the heart of the Great Satan.
With or without the W88, I’m guessing Iran has received modern, sophisticated bomb design, much better than a grad student’s hobby bomb, and may be capable of producing a megaton-range warhead.
Is Israel or the US – Little Satan or Big Satan – the more likely first target?
A nuclear attack may be like that great magic trick, the one so astounding you can only perform it once.
If Mamoud is smart enough to realize he may have to CHOOSE between the two Satans, will he prefer to attack Tel-Aviv or New York?
Personally, I think the question of will Iran get the bomb, or how soon, or even “will they use it?” has become a bit silly. What is going to stop them, or even slow them down?
We just got through showing His Majesty Hu Jintao that we love and adore him, and would never do anything to cause him to “lose face.”
He is completely free, along with Russia, to provide Iran unlimited technical guidance and material assistance – for “peaceful purposes” only, of course.
With the assistance they’ve already received from A. Q. Khan, the “father” of the Pakistani bomb, plus two nuclear superpowers helping out, what will stop Iran from developing a first-rate nuclear weapons program?
It’s now only a question of, will they do what they’ve promised to do?
If you believe their nuke weapons program is only to make them feel like big players on the world stage, appease their Khomeini-ist Islamists at home, and increase their fortunes by driving up the price of crude oil, well then…
What, me worry?
On the other hand, if you believe they’ll soon be holding a lottery to choose which martyr gets the high honor of driving the holy van into Tel Aviv, or sailing the sacred ship into the port of New York, you have to wonder, aside from $10 per gallon gasoline, what other “fallout” will there be, when another mad regime does exactly what it said it would do.
The Iranians have never threatened to blow up Tel Aviv. Such an attack would be suicidal and would kill thousands or millions of Muslims. Promoting the notion that your enemies are drooling maniacs is simply stupid…and cowardly to boot. I hope you guys change your shorts now and then after you scare yourselves to death.
The Iranian “crisis” is largely manufactured
1. The Iranians are not very close to having a bomb
2. The Iranians have no national interest in attacking anybody and every reason to expect to be attacked
3. The Pakistanis and the Israelis, both of whom already have the bomb, are obviously more dangerous to the peace of the world than Iran since both have plenty of religious fanatics one election or one coup away from power.
4. The domestic political advantage of creating an Iranian war is obvious as is the way in which it serves the interests of the right-wing parties in Israel. The people who are promoting confrontation have a long track record of cynicism and dishonesty.
Jim I agree 100%. One should also note that a war against Iran to destroy their nuclear installations could escalate into a regional war killing hundred thousand or more people. That would be similar to exploding a nuke in a city.
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Do the Hawks read the News or do they just play video games before writing onto this forum….
The real problem isn’t Iran’s nuclear ambitions or whether it’s leadership is hell bent on destroying Israel. The key players in our run-up to World War 3 is China, Russia, and whether Petrol is sold in Euros or Dollars..
For China to sustain it’s incredible rate of growth, it will need many times more oil than it is receiving today. China’s addiction to oil is second only to the US, and will soon surpass it. This is why China has been busy getting in good with oil producing nations around the world, including Iran and those in South America.
The point here is that China is not going to sit idly by while America tries to institute regime change in Iran and thereby control China’s Oil Faucet. The missles sold to Iran by China had a purpose. The Nuclear reactor from Russia has the same intention…. But the question is WHCH IS IT? Are they vielded threats to the US to back off, or are they in actuality lures to bog the the US into another quagmire.. nice and ripe for an attack…. Such a case might leave Taiwan open for Chinese invasion, and other US interests in Asia fair game for Chinese bullying….
For the hawks out there who keep screaming ‘regime change’ in Iran….. WAKE UP!! Afghanistan was suppose to be the easy one… and yet, the Taliban still have enough of a voice to be welcomed to the negotiating table. Need I mention our report card in Iraq.. I wish more of you were on the ground, so you could see what happens to kids – when suicide bombers drive into schools or when Tomahwk missiles miss their target…. Please don’t bring Playstation talk to this forum when there are real lives, real people, real babies who DIE in real wars…
The truth is regardless of what the US does now, war is imminent…… A nuclear Iran is inevitalbe (if not already a fact) is completely unacceptable to the West, and Israel will act unilaterally when she’s ready….dragging the US into it whether it likes it or not… IF the US attacks Iran, it’s instant Mid-East Regional war – It’ll be just like the World Cup, except instead of referee, the US will be the soccer ball…… . If the US DOES NOT attack Iran, then Iran will start trading Oil in Euros instead of Dollars.. a SEVERE blow to US economics – so much so that, we are willing to risk WWIII to prevent it from happening… http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HEA306B.html … That’s right it’s not about Iraqi Freedom, and not really about OIL.. but rather about Dollars versus Euros….. [noticed China’s unpegging of the Yan to the dollar…. and current talk of pegging it the Euro….] …. There will be a regime change in the next few years, but the regime in question isn’t Iran…. its the US….
I don’t have the answer… but I do know that starting a regime change in Iran is a suicide mission for our soldiers that will also irrevocably kill half million innocent Iraninans in the process… and yet, won’t do a darn thing to prevent WWIII ….
too….
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