The news that Iran has reached a frightening milestone in its nuclear program means the world, and the US and Israel in particular, are going to have do something to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons sooner than anyone would like:

Iran has achieved a landmark with 3,000 centrifuges fully working in its controversial uranium enrichment program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.

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Centrifuges are used in enriching uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead.

As usual the news media is obscuring the situation and not being clear with the American people (or the world) as to what this truly means. It took me some time, but I finally located some information that can translate the number of gas centrifuges into production capacity for nuclear weapons, specifically as it relates to Iran:

In 2002, research, development, and assembly operations were moved to Natanz. This facility is now the primary site of the Iranian gas centrifuge program. It consists of centrifuge assembly areas and a pilot fuelenrichment plant slated to hold 1,000 centrifuges. A production-scale fuelenrichment plant is under construction at Natanz, and is scheduled to hold about 50,000 centrifuges.

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Although the pilot plant is relatively small, if finished, it could produce about 10 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium a year, depending on the “tails assay” (the fraction of uranium 235 lost to waste) and the manner in which the centrifuges are organized into cascades.

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At 15-20 kilograms per weapon, that would be enough for 25-30 nuclear weapons per year [for a 50,000 centrifuge arrangement].

The referenced report was looking at the final 50,000 centrifuge configuration the Iranians are building towards. But the point is the 3,000 centrifuge mark just achieved by Iran can produce 30 kg per year, which is sufficient for 2 small nuclear weapons.

Given the fact Iran has been smuggling state-of-thepart charged shaped explosive devices into Iraq from months now, combined with the fact Iran controls a broad army of Islamic terrorists across the Mideast, we face a real threat. Jihadi martyrs could soon spread out into the world carrying small nuclear weapons that will cause mass destruction and death.

We cannot let the blind hate of Islamo Fascism get to the point they can arm suicide bombers with nuclear weapons. Simply to protect all the innocent people who would be maimed and killed in such a scenario the world cannot sit back and let this threat become a reality. I am not proposing or hoping for any specific solution. But the bottom line is Iran cannot be allowed to continue as is much longer – and I mean on the order of months. There is no guarantee the 3,000 centrifuge mark has not actually been operating for months. Gas centrifuge facilities are very, very hard to detect and identify. They do not look, on the outside and from a power utilization viewpoint, much different than most factories. The fact is the lives of many people are now in the balance and we are rapidly running out of time to avoid a human catastrophe.