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Published online 20 February 2009 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2009.115
Updated online: 26 February 2009
News: Briefing
Iran's nuclear plans
Do a satellite launch and a tonne of enriched uranium add up to an arsenal?
According to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, released yesterday, Iran has produced around a tonne of low-enriched uranium. That number was well above the United Nations' nuclear watchdog's estimate of 660 kilograms in November 2008.
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accesses no more than a few warheads. Iran would be melted in reprisal for nuking a Western ally. A rich target sits 20,300 km straight up: US GPS orbits. US military operations involving navigation or targeting are inert absent GPS. Watch for booster development and some *very* dirty bombs.
Obviously I don't want that Iran makes the bomb. However, its danger is instrumentally magnified: Tehran could never stike, since retaliation would melt it (Israel has 5 nuclear armed undestroyable submarines). What is true is that Iran could no longer be attacked! In order to prevent Tehran form making the bomb, one has to negotiate, not bomb it, and accept Iran in the international community as any other State. On the other hand, Brazil has already carried through the enrichment process, and nobody has protested!
Lewis is underestimating the importance of those developments. They are more than just additions to that countries national prestige. they are indicative of a future nuclear bomb building capability that may be a few years away.
despite the obvious that it would be insane to bamb countries that have retaliatory nuclear capability, there is still the possibility that extremists will go through with a crazy option.
"China got the bomb, but have no fears, They can't wipe us out for at least five years." --Tom Lehrer, c. 1967
The most effective application would not be a direct bombing via rocket or "dirty" bomb but an EMP from just off shore from any freighter. Small yield only is necessary with a short flght and no time to react. Down goes the grid. rm
Technological discussions on this topic seem absurd. Any committed (I use that word in several senses) user can produce a very nasty dirty nuclear device easily. The one and only reliable solution to such problems is to ban the bomb. And to implement that ban. In this instance, that can only be acheived through a normallisation of political relations with Iran. "Extremists" are us: some years back Curtis LeMay wanted to "bomb the commies back into the stone age" - and McCain's rewrite of "Barbara Ann" continues the refrain. One can hardly criticise a proselytizing theocracy for "extremism" - it's their state-of-the-art. Would they be more or less extreme, I wonder, than a nation that has thousands of hydrogen bombs ready to go?