President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran has boosted its capacity to enrich uranium, another sign of anti-Western defiance by the leader seeking re-election in a vote next month.
Ahmadinejad said last month that Iran had 7,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in central Iran. The figure marked a significant boost from the 6,000 centrifuges announced in February. In his latest comments, reported by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency on Thursday, he did not give a specific new figure.
"Now we have more than 7,000 centrifuges and the West dare not threaten us," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on a small radio station late Wednesday.
The Iranians highlight it, boasting of their ability to enrich Uranium. We focus on it, looking for clues that can help us calculate when Iran can enrich enough Uranium for an atomic bomb. And Iran quietly progresses on the Plutonium path, too.
But is this apparent agreement on the importance of Uranium enrichment a red herring?
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?
Iran and North Korea have been real tight on missile technology. And North Korea was involved witht that secret reactor that Syria was building. Don't pretend that Iran didn't fund that. There is no way that Syria could afford that bauble.
And in the latest North Korean crisis, reports keep coming out that North Korea has enough nuclear material for about 6 bombs. Why does everyone seem to assume that North Korea still has all that material? Sure, we are focused on preventing that transfer. But have we been successful?
Are we simply being distracted by the Iranians over enrichment when that is merely the long-range plan for building nukes, while the short-term plan progresses secretly with efforts to just buy nuclear material? Iran has the money. And North Korea certainly needs the money.
As I've said, our enemies may be semi-nuts and dress like 1975 lounge singers, but that doesn't mean they are stupid. Don't under-estimate their ability to outwit us.
