Iran keeps raiding their stockpile of 20% enriched Uranium to delay the estimated time it will be before Iran has enough to further enrich for a bomb. Iran is doing this to buy time to increase their ability to break out of the talks and denial farce and race to nuclear capabilities:
Together, the new IR-1 and IR-2m centrifuges would more than double the current output of the Natanz facility. This would translate into a nearly 50 percent reduction – from 99 days to 52 – in the time it would take Iran to produce 20 kilograms of HEU, the minimum for a nuclear weapon.
Thus, Iran might be delaying the day when it is ready to make the dash to a nuclear weapon, but is ensuring that the dash will be as short as possible. In effect, Iran is shrewdly sidestepping Israel’s red line while raising the stakes for the next round of international negotiations.
I think the author has the right idea, but if I was an Iranian nutball, I'd worry that 52 days was way too long to race to the security that they believe atomic weapons will provide them. Sure, there could be a couple weeks of not being sure if they passed the threshold and a couple more weeks to decide to strike. But that would still leave more than three weeks to attack Iran and keep Iran from crossing that red line.
If I was chief nutball of Iran, I'd want some nukes before I start racing to produce as much HEU as I can:
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?
The Iranians are nuts. But they aren't stupid. If I was the chief Iranian nutball, I'd buy nukes from impoverished North Korea--which seems to have perfected their design--or at least buy the design blueprints from North Korea while bringing in the HEU for the warhead from sources that don't have the same level of attention as those centrifuges receive, and which we seem to be defining as the red line for action.
