Via the Jerusalem Post comes the disturbing assessment by Israeli intelligence that Iran will be able to begin enriching uranium on a “military scale” by next year:
With Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.The new assessment moves up Israel’s forecasts on Teheran’s nuclear program by almost a full year – from 2009 to the end of 2008. According to the new timeline, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next year.
Iran, a senior defense official said on Tuesday, had encountered numerous technical obstacles on its way to enriching uranium but was now on track to master the technology needed to enrich uranium within six months.
Israel is also concerned that Teheran is developing a cruise missile that can evade interception by the Arrow, the IDF’s anti-ballistic missile defense system. Iran is suspected of having smuggled Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles and using them as models for an independent, domestic project. A cruise missile, which flies at low altitudes to dodge radar detection and interception, could be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
Our own intelligence estimate, of course, says that Iran isn’t even trying to build a bomb. But could the Mossad’s evidence cause us to amend that NIE? This also from the J-Post quoting the London Sunday Times:
Mossad chief Meir Dagan is expected to brief Britain’s MI6 head Sir John Scarlett, who is slated to visit Israel later this month, on an intelligence breakthrough regarding the Iranian nuclear program, London’s Sunday Times reported.Concern has been mounting in Israel that Iran’s nuclear capability may be far more advanced than was recognized by the US National Intelligence Estimate last December, which reported that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 in response to international pressure.
A source quoted by the paper on Sunday claimed that the new information was on par with intelligence that led to the discovery and destruction of a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria last September.
Israeli officials believe the US will revise its analysis of Iran’s program.
“We expect the Americans to amend their report soon,” a high-ranking military officer said last week.
In the interest of fairness (and because I enjoy confusing my readers) allow me to quote extensively from a post on Arms Control Wonk in March that talked about a disturbing report from Janes Defense Weekly about what is going on behind the scenes of the Iranian nuclear program:
Documents shown exclusively to Jane’s indicate that Iran is continuing its pursuit of the advanced technologies necessary to develop a nuclear weapon, regardless of Tehran’s claims that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful. Jane’s was shown the information by a source connected to a Western intelligence service, and the documents were verified by a number of reliable independent sources in Vienna.These documents purport to show that:
...an organisation within the Iranian MoD has actively pursued the development of a nuclear weapon system based on relatively advanced multipoint initiation (MPI) nuclear implosion detonation technology for some years, in parallel with developments within the Atomic Energy Authority of Iran.
The article further states that since 2000 Iran has tested these detonators and found them “good enough” for a nuclear weapon (it also discusses the organization of Iran’s nuclear programme but that’s for a different post).
But to show you the ambiguity inherent in even a report like that, I quote Dr. Lewis and his analysis of this news:
Well, the development of multipoint detonation systems isn’t by itself proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons (let’s skip over the question of whether it really is sensible for the international community to demand proof as opposed to good evidence of wrong doing). As this patent from the US government shows, there are legitimate (largely military) reasons for developing explosive devices which involve multiple initiators.My guess-and I am not certain-is that a multipoint detonation system can be unambiguously associated with nuclear weapons if its “jitter time” (that is, the time spread of the detonations) is particularly small. My knowledge of the pre-1991 Iraqi programme gives us some idea how simultaneous the detonations in a nuclear weapon need to be-Iraq aimed for a jitter time of less than 1 microsecond and ended up measuring it in nanoseconds. However, I don’t know for certain whether there is a legitimate application that requires the same degree of simultaneity. Sounds like an interesting problem to tackle properly when I get some time.
As you can see, Lewis is not entirely convinced that the detonators are used for the exclusive purpose of setting off a nuclear weapon. It is this kind of uncertainty that makes any decision to go after the Iranian nuclear infrastructure so problematic.
Who or what should we believe of Iran’s nuclear program? No one doubts Iran’s desire to possess a nuclear weapon. But are they really capable of overcoming the immense technical obstacles to build a bomb and a delivery system to threaten Israel as well as our allies in the region?
We can’t just dismiss these questions and then bomb hell out of Iran. An attack on the Iranians would bring far reaching and unseen consequences to not only our own security but the security of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other states in the region.
Others, like our own State Department and intelligence establishment, may have the luxury of burying their heads in the sand and pretending the problem doesn’t exist. But Israel cannot afford to do so – not without the potential for catastrophic consequences.
We know that the Iranians are making good progress in enriching uranium to the 5% level suitable for use in a nuclear reactor. Their facility at Nantanz is gearing up to double its centrifuge capacity which would increase their ability to enrich more raw uranium at a faster rate.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (who it should be noted have yet to prevent any country who wished to build a bomb from going nuclear) is monitoring the Iranian program but still have questions about their intent.
The Europeans for the most part are siding with us – as long as we don’t bomb Iran. Gordon Brown, Nicholas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel all agree that the Iranian program poses a very serious threat to the west and have gone along so far with the US both at the UN and rhetorically as well.
But as far as actually addressing the threat, precious little has been done besides some ineffective sanctions imposed by the Security Council and equally ineffective jawboning by IAEA chief ElBaradei. In effect, the Iranians are getting away with whatever they are doing because they are able to stonewall the international community on what their intentions are.
All of this makes bombing more likely with its concomitant consequences staring us in the face. But as long as China and Russia keep handing the Iranians matches as they run toward the gasoline dump, there is precious little the world can do except stand by and watch the endgame scenario play out.
One of us – Israel or the United States – will almost certainly be compelled to bomb the Iranian nuclear infrastructure – unless the world community, including Russia and China, make a 180 degree turn regarding the seriousness with which they take the Iranian program. It probably will not happen this year. But once Iran is capable of enriching uranium by the pound rather than the gram, expect a countdown in Tel Aviv or Washington to begin.
Which man will you want sitting in the White House when this decision has to be made?
Note: Much of this post originally appears in The American Thinker
2:18 pm
The International Atomic Energy Agency (who it should be noted have yet to prevent any country who wished to build a bomb from going nuclear)
It should probably be also noted that none of the nations who have developed a bomb since the inception of the IAEA and the NPT were parties to the treaty at the time they developed it. Israel, Pakistan, India, South Africa. Several nations who were parties to the NPT have stopped short of building a bomb when they undoubtably had the ability to do so. Brazil, Japan, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada and others. It would seem, prima facie, that while intent is the final decider, being a member in good standing of the NPT and having IAEA oversight acts as a modifier of that intent.
John Bolton has said it is legal and allowable for a nation to develop nukes if it never signs on to the NPT, (he was talking about India) but that it becomes illegal and worthy of airstrikes only if an NPT member builds a bomb or walks away from its NPT obligations to do so (e.g. North Korea). Is that your position too, Rick?
I could give a damn what bull oney international no-teeth treaty they’ve signed on to. I care what their intent toward America is.
Why in God’s name that isn’t your first consideration too is mindboggling.
ed.
2:30 pm
No need to worry.
Obama will win in a landslide. Then, as president, he’ll sit down with the Iranians face to face and tell them to stop.
Since Obama’s presidency will all be about “change”, the Iranians will change their minds and they’ll stop their nuclear ambitions.
Only Obama can get them to stop…after all, his father was muslin.
McCain will simply bomb the shit out of them.
2:58 pm
No More War For Zionist Israel! Enough.
3:57 pm
I don’t think U.S. or ‘friendly” intelligence agencies have enough credibility to be believed without producing a ton of solid evidence – thanks to the Iraq WMD charade.
And, what can the U.S. do anyways? Our military is stretched to the breaking point. Our economy cannot sustain the huge costs of another invasion or the consequences of possible interruptions in the flow of oil out of the gulf.
Iran knows the Bush administration has become a barking dog with no teeth. Israel will have to tackle this on their own.
3:59 pm
Seriously though, you want to talk about a nightmare scenario…?
Think about a President Obama with a filibuster-proof, Democratic Congress!
Now that’s almost scarier than hell itself!
4:36 pm
Multi-point initiators are pretty much non-existent in conventional systems. There just isn’t much to be gained from using them. Sure there are some, but they are primitive because the timing isn’t that important. The fact that they had the program to study it is pretty damning to me.
6:10 pm
I would only point out that you can’t bomb knowledge. Attacking Iran’s infrastructure will only delay things and drive the program completely underground as it did with Iraq after the Osirak attack. Iran has already crossed the Rubicon and can build and operate cascades pretty much on its own. We can destroy the facilities they have, but they’ll be able to rebuild in secret within a few years.
So IMO, attacking Iran not only carries huge risks, but will fail to achieve the objective.
A better course of action, IMO, is to get Iran to ratify and fully implement the additional protocol to the NPT. This, along with surveillance by US and other intelligence services, will stymie any major bomb-building effort and may deter Iran from “unhalting” it’s weaponization work. Of course, Iran will require some kind of bribe to accede to the AP and the viability of such a solution will obviously depend on what Iran wants in return.
Finally Rick, you said, “No one doubts Iran’s desire to possess a nuclear weapon.” I’m not sure the issue is that clear. All of Iran’s WMD programs were actually a response to Saddam’s Iraq and not Israel. Iran knew full well that Iraq was working on a bomb and it saw how close Iraq came in 1991. As long as Saddam was in power, Iran judged, correctly I think, that Iraq would work toward nuclear weapons. After the devastation of the Iran-Iraq war, pursuit of a nuclear capability in response to Iraq seems a completely rational course of action.
Now that Saddam is gone and with it Iran’s primary regional threat, Iran may indeed have changed, or may be considering a change, it its nuclear weapons program. Iran’s intransigence with the IAEA may therefore be an effort to hide its past weaponization efforts rather than its future intentions. Of course this is only a theory, but I think it’s important to consider alternatives and look at things from the Iranian perspective – especially since the strategic environment in the Gulf changed so fundamentally with the fall of Saddam. It might be argued that continuing development of nuclear weapons is a bad course of action for Iran since US policy is that such development will be met with an attack. IOW, developing nuclear weapons will not provide Iran with a deterrent – quite the opposite. A true deterrent will require at least several bombs along with a reliable means of delivery – something that’s still many years away (warhead miniaturization and mating to missiles is not as easy as is commonly believed). That’s an extraordinary risk for Iran to take since further detection of its program is likely which would invite attack.
Anyway, just something to consider.
As usual, all good points Andy. Your analysis presupposes we are looking at rational actors on the other side – something I think likely but am not sure of 100%. Just today, the mullacracy took Ahmadinejad to task for his obsession with the 12th imam – a good sign that the Rafsanjani/Khatami faction may be gaining the upper hand. But you know Iran – factions within factions all working at cross purposes and trying to discredit each other. There may very well be a nuke faction in Iran that Khamenei is allowing to work. This goes back to your opening sentence; not only can we not bomb knowledge, we can’t glean intent with so little information available.
ed.
7:25 am
Iran nukes Israel, then Israel launches her nukes at Iran. Nuclear winter for all and two new parking lots of cooling glass in the Middle East. I liked the previous comment saying “You can’t bomb knowlege.” The nuke club is growing, slowly but surely. That horse has long since left the barn. We can slow it down, but I can’t imagine stopping it entirely.
This is a test for the international community that it is failing. It takes more than “knowledge” to build a nuke. It takes expertise and a high tech industrial infrastructure. The technology may have been known since 1945 but there are some extraordinarily difficult steps to turn a lump of 100 lbs or so of HE uranium into something that won’t fizzle. Ask the NoKo’s. For that reason, there is still time – probably more than the Israelis are saying who are only concerned about Iran’s ability to convert enough uranium hex into enriched uranium. A crude device – the gun design we used on Hiroshima – might be within reach of the Iranians in 3 years; if their centrifuges work as planned (a big if) and if they can somehow evade detection by the IAEI and take their uranium that has been enriched to 5% and further the process until it is enriched to the 90% threshold for weaponizing. Then they’ve got to experiment very carefully to see how much of their HE uranium is needed to achieve critical mass. Then they need neutron inhibitors. Then they need a delivery system.
At any one of those steps, they could fail.
The point being, Jazz is that the international community can make it extremely difficult for the Iranians to continue their weaponization program by initiating strict sanctions on materials and travel by engineers and scientists to keep them from their goal while insisting on a strict inspections regimine.
The genie is out of the bottle but his powers are non existent unless he is enabled by the rest of the world.
ed.
7:43 am
What seems to be missing from this debate is the consequence of the USA doing nothing, or “accepting” a nuclear Iran.
If we, A) fail to stop them diplomatically, and/or B) decide that military option isn’t worth the risks, at some point Israel will act against Iran.
People can debate that Israel “lacks the resources” to get the job done, but they have found ways to make things work time and time again and no one should dismiss them out of hand on this brewing crisis.
And, don’t think for a minute that a president can “force” Israel from not defending itself in this situation. They know that the worst than could happen would be a rough four years with an adversarial US administration. No president is going to totally cut off all aid to Israel. The Evangelicals and Jewish Lobby would throw and absolute fit if that happens.
Regardless of either outcome, this country better start preparing itself for a very bad outcome one way or another. There is no way out of this shit sandwich other than swallowing it.
2:11 pm
Rick,
Agree with your comments on my comments. Factions within factions is a good way to describe it. It’s unfortunate that many of our leaders do not see these divides and therefore cannot effectively exploit them to weaken the dangerous factions and strengthen those element with whom a deal could be struck. This is the case regardless of party, ITSM.
9:16 pm
Did I understand correctly that the US transferred some KC-10s to Israel in the recent past? And that we also gave them access to our super-penetrator bomb technology and some examples?
If so, Israel is close to being fully equipped to make a bomb run to Iran and back, especially if we do not block them from transiting Iraqi airspace, and maybe Jordan looks the other way as well.
To me, this means Israel will execute the run the minute they decide that Iran has gone far enough with their nuke development. I agree that the US will not be able to stop them. What I also believe is that we will have to join them, for Iran will retaliate, and will include us in their counterstrikes.
I still moan the reductions Clinton made in the Army, and Bush’s reluctance to build it back up. We will need a lot of troops, and soon, don’t you think?
8:35 am
did it ever occur to anyone that Iran is a soveriegn country?
elected their own president
given our track record in accusing mid eastern countries of weapons violations, we should probably just attack them
i mean we don’t need any stinkin facts
in saw it on fox news
must be true
11:33 am
“One of us – Israel or the United States – will almost certainly be compelled to bomb the Iranian nuclear infrastructure – unless the world community, including Russia and China, make a 180 degree turn regarding the seriousness with which they take the Iranian program” Rick Moran
It seems to me that this is a rather arrogant position at odds with recent facts. The US is already engaged in military conflict with Iran; albeit via proxies, and we are losing.
Iran defies the US saber rattling by stepping up their efforts to develop nuclear weapons. They send weapons and expertise to the “insurgents” in Iraq to kill American and British soldiers. And now, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon; Hezbollah, has taken control of the media and government. Hezbollah can now prepare for war with Israel in earnest within the safety of their new “State within a State” status.
The US and Israel are losing. The fact is that the US can do nothing unilaterally and Israel will surely invite a deadly war at their doorstep. We should remember that Hezbollah is the only military force that has actually fought and beat the Israeli army (2006).
Andy mentioned in his insightful post (number 7) that negotiating seems to be the best way forward. I agree and think it is time we recognize that US gun boat diplomacy only works if the gun boat isn’t sinking.
Hezbullah did not defeat the Israelis. I’m surprised you fell for that propaganda. At wars end, Israel had 15,000 men moving west from the Litani river about to crush the Hez fighters in that pocket. They Israelis also killed at least 3 times as many of the enemy as they lost – a sure sign of battlefield superiority.
The perception of an Israeli defeat – the Winograd Commission called it a “disappointment” – is spread by people like you who somehow believe talking with the Iranians (or Hezbullah) will halt their development of weapons or modify their behavior. Ask the Siniora government about talking to Hezbullah – they’ve been doing it for more than a year and have gotten absolutely nowhere. Meanwhile, the Hez rearmed and planned the current coup. As for the Iranians, the Big Three EU countries negotiated with them for three years and it didn’t stop or slow them down one bit in their enrichment program.
These are international actors the likes of which the world has not seen before. The burden of proof is on those who say Iran is open to negotiations and will alter their behavior if only we aren’t so beastly to them. To do the opposite is madness.
ed.
8:26 pm
I would like to point out that this country is about to spend BILLIONS on ‘climate change’ because even if there is any chance at all the mankind is causing ‘climate change’, we have to do something.
I contend that if there is any possibility at all that Iran will use nuclear weapons against the US, than we have to do something to protect the citizens against attack. The problem with negotiating with an avowed enemy is you never really know when he is lying until you get your ass shot off.
10:29 am
Ed – Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post (see post #13)- You responded that “Hezbullah did not defeat the Israelis. I’m surprised you fell for that propaganda.”
The fact that Hezbollah withstood Israel’s 2006 military invasion was indeed a huge victory. They stood their ground until Israel retreated without meeting any real objectives.
The Israeli people saw this as a defeat and demanded to know what went wrong. The Winograd Commission “was established to respond to the bad feelings of the Israeli public of a crisis and disappointment caused by the results of the 2nd Lebanon war, and from the way it was managed by the political and military echelons; and the wish to draw lessons from the failings of the war and its flaws.”
No doubt Israel could have won the war had they been willing to inflict serious collateral damage (Hezbollah positioned rocket/missile launchers in civilian areas). To their credit, Israeli humanitarian concerns compromised the military effort and a possible victory.
Hezbullah is stronger than ever. They now control the Lebanese government and the media. The Lebanese population relies on their benevolence.