Having switched production of higher-grade enriched uranium to a new, underground site, Iran is now just a year or so away from having enough such material for a nuclear bomb, a former head of U.N. nuclear inspections said.
We've heard this before and Iran still isn't nuclear. It relies on assumptions that Iran goes full tilt on enrichment and that other technical obstacles have been overcome.
But there is no doubt that Iran continues to make progress. Arguing over when Iran goes nuclear misses the point that Iran will go nuclear and that stopping them sooner is better than later in terms of preventing them from restarting the program if we succeed in stopping them. And progress isn't linear. At some point, Iran can accelerate their progress:
If Iran decides to produce weapons-grade uranium from 20 percent enriched uranium, it has already technically undertaken 90 percent of the enrichment effort required. What remains to be done is the feeding of 20 percent uranium through existing additional cascades to achieve weapons-grade enrichment (more than 90 percent uranium). This step is much faster than the earlier ones. Growing the stockpile of 3.5 percent and 20 percent enriched uranium, as Iran is now doing, provides the basic material needed to produce four to five nuclear weapons.
Iran will surprise us when they go nuclear. We've never correctly anticipated when a state tests a nuke to demonstrate they are nuclear.
And even if Iran is the first state that we can accurately predict when they will go nuclear, won't Iran be aware that at some point they will cross a red line and provoke America or Israel into striking Iran's nuclear infrastructure?
If I was a nutball fearful that my domestic infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons was approaching the point where it might provoke an attack to destroy that infrastructure, I'd want a small supply of nukes purchased abroad to deter that strike and buy time to get a really potent nuclear force. Purchased nukes would also provide a little assurance that I had something that worked if my own people didn't quite manage to master the engineering skill for building an actual working warhead:
The problem from Iran's point of view is that they can't know if crossing one of these lines could trigger an American or Israeli preemptive strike out of fear that further delay in attacking would be too late to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And if I was an Iranian nutball, I wouldn't assume the Americans and Israelis couldn't knock out my infrastructure.
Were I an Iranian nutball, under those circumstances, I'd want at least a few atomic warhead on hand before I announce capabilities to produce atomic weapons-grade material. Which would mean I'd have had to have bought some from either North Korea or Pakistan--or possibly even from some broke custodian of Russia's arsenal.
If Iran can announce both the ability to make nuclear bomb material and the possession of actual nuclear weapons--perhaps by detonating one in a test on their own territory--Tehran would quite possibly deter an attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
We're not dealing with idiots. If the Iranian mullahs believe there are red lines that trigger Israeli or American action, why wouldn't they take counter-actions rather than just blindly cross those lines and provide a pretext for military action against them?
Iranian's rulers may be fanatical. But they aren't stupid. Don't assume they are stupid. Instead, we seem to assume they are stupid but not fanatical.
My hope is that we have prepared the Obama Option to retain a military plan without relying on intelligence to tell us when we can pre-empt Iran right when we calculate the threat is "imminent."
Have a nice day.
