Apr 03 2007
The Gathering Iranian Nuclear Holocaust
The wake up call on Iran’s nuclear weapons capability is at hand:
ran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, potentially enabling the Islamic regime to develop a nuclear bomb by 2009, much sooner than previousely though, a media report said yesterday.
Tehran has added 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material, which means the country could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, ABC Television network reported quoting sources “familiar with the dramatic upgrade.”
The sources said the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground.
A spokesperson for the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declined to comment on the report citing the “extreme sensitivity” of the situation with Iran.
Tehran has already declared that its above-ground operations at Natanz have some 320 centrifuges.
The addition of 1,000 new centrifuges, which are not yet operational, means Iran is expanding its enrichment programme at a pace much faster than US intelligence experts had predicted, ABC said.
If the error bars around this estimate are off by 6-12 months (as they were with India and Pakistand and North Korea) then we are on the precipice of something really horrific. Tehran’s actions with the UK Sailors and Marines is but a pittance of what the world and humankind would face with a nuclear armed state preparing for martyrdom.
That is what bothers me about the Democrats. They would see civilians slaughtered in other countries for their own cynical domestic political gains. It truly is sickening. The Democrats don’t want peace, they want mayhem. It’s Orwellian.
A little boy? He was born in 1960 – his father fled Iran in 1979 – that’s 19 years old, fool, old enough to serve in Iraq!
What do you think this parasite has lived on all his life? What paid for the houses, the planes, the education, the jet setting – if not the Twelve Billion Dollars his father stole from the Iranian treasury? What put food on the table and bought the fancy clothes? You think this weasel ever worked a freakin’ day in his life? Get serious.
Poor little rich boy – just like the jackass in the Whitehouse.
We have to do something about Iran. We don’t have to bomb the whole country. We could just take out their infrastructure and of course Bushewar. That would chap them raw. And bomb any locations that are suspected of being nuclear sites. We cannot let them have nukes.
Of course, the dims say for us to leave Iran alone. Sometimes I wonder what’s in it for the dims for them to support our enemies. It sounds just like France, Germany and Russia not wanting us to invade Iraq because our invasion messed up their sweet deal in the Oil for Food program. Maybe bombing Iran would mess up some sweet deal the dims have going also. I put nothing past these people. They want the US to lose. They figure it would probably would mean more power for them.
AJ,
This is from a post of mine on the Winds of Change blog:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008424.php
Suppose the Iranians came at the nuclear weapon technology tree with a different set of priorities? What if their choice was not based on getting fissile material? What if that was solved via sales from North Korea or via pre-enriched uranium from other sources that Iran can rapidly make highly enriched? Suppose instead they want to have a reliable nuclear warhead for Scuds and longer ranged Scud derivative missiles as soon as possible instead? That was Tom Holsinger’s point in his Case for Invading Iran.
The key nuclear device weight performance targets are one metric ton for a Scud and 500lbs for a long range Scud derivative.
The technology tree choice in that case is to get a gun-type enriched uranium bomb. Historically gun-type nukes were smaller and faster to develop than implosion type weapons. As an example, America test detonated an 11 inch diameter nuclear cannon shell in 1953 which was 36 inches long and weighed 540 lbs.
I don’t think that the Iranians have matched the M65 11-inch “Atomic Annie” cannon’s shell size with their device, but I do think they have at least one fielded design sized for a basic Scud.
Recent history supports the gun type bomb as the major secret proliferation threat. Both Iraq’s secret Calutron using nuclear program and South Africa’s successful program used gun type bomb designs.
South Africa under its past white governments built seven gun type atomic bombs in ten years enriching 320 kg of HEU for $250 million using no more than 300 people at peak to build them. Their bombs weighed 2,000 pounds each and were scaled for carriage by Buccaneer strike aircraft.
Iran is not as technologically sophisticated as South Africa was, but South Africa did not have the use of the A.Q. Khan/North Korean nuclear black market either.