How Long Until Iran Has a Nookular Weapon?

[cherokeeprogressive]

65 years ago, this nation embarked on a program to acquire one, from scratch. NO ONE knew the secrets of producing the things, and we let the genie out of the bottle in shortly over four years.

Now, advance the clock 65 years. Consider how much technology exists that can be purchased off the shelf for enriching uranium/producing nookular weapons.

How long to the day Iran possesses Nukes?

Secondary Question: What will they do with them? We think of the shrub as one kook with his finger on the button. Shouldn't we be thinking of that crazy Iranian president as the second?

[yourout]

1. The genie has been shoved back in the bottle but the next time he comes...

out will be the last for mankind. Even the idiots in the White House and Tehran know this.

[patdem]

2. Well in Iran the kook president does not carry the 'football'...

and he has no control over anything except talking crazy...and then we have boosh!

[cherokeeprogressive]

9. Wow I didn't know...

that someone from DU had a line on how the nookular hierarchy (chain of command) in Iran worked.

I'm totally interested, and all ears (EYES, as it were, since this is a visual medium) as to what the president of Iran can and cannot do.

Care to share?

[mike_c]

3. not going to happen like that....

You're comparing apples to oranges-- the U.S. was the greatest industrial powerhouse on earth in the 1940's and threw huge amounts of money, energy, industrial capacity, and skilled people at the task, including some of the best theoreticians in the world. The Oak Ridge enrichment cascade used a full ten percent of the nation's entire electrical generating capacity.

Iran has 164 operating gas centrifuges and has achieved only 3.5 percent enrichment (or was it 2.4 percent?-- I'm having a senior moment). At that rate they would need to enrich for 50 years in order to obtain enough highly enriched uranium, i.e. 80 percent to 90 percent or higher, to build a bomb. Certainly they will enlarge their centrifuge cascade and they've already said they'll apply to the IAEA for permission to expand to 3000 centrifuges, but they would need at least an order of magnitude more in order to approach the sort of enrichment pace the U.S. achieved during WWII.

Iran's nuclear ambitions-- whatever they are-- will not be a concern for another decade or so, IMO, unless they BUY nuclear bombs. They're taking the long route now. Stop listening to the cable propaganda outlets.

on edit: Iraq, Iran, what's the difference.... :rofl:

[magellan]

4. No matter what we do, short of wiping Iran off the map

...they will one day possess nukes. There are better ways of dealing with rhetoric than bombing offensive nations back to the stone age while hypocritcally letting other highly questionable countries arm themselves.

[savemefromdumbya]

5. Mr Putin may give them one as a birthday present?

[MercutioATC]

6. More likely they'd buy one from N. Korea.

Iran has more money than they know what to do with and N. Korea isn't concerned how the international community will view it for selling nukes to a country like Iran.

Russia has too much at stake to sell or give a nuke to Iran.

[pitohui]

7. i think they likely already have one

probably have for years if you're talking abt a hiroshima or nagasaki-type atomic weapon, which i think you are, since you refer to the manhattan project

i think a lot of nations do and little is made of it because, really, what can be done abt it, in the 1970s a D student in physics got his grade changed to an A by re-developing the design for an atomic weapon as a school project

it just ain't that hard

so much of this is political posturing but i would be amazed if iran had not developed an atomic weapon in the 80s, indeed, it seems that at the time i heard rumors they had

[savemefromdumbya]

8. but it probably will just go as far as Israel

no need to worry it won't hit us:sarcasm:

[Douglas Carpenter]

10. Fishing for a Pretext in Iran

those familiar with the Bush Administration are familiar with their kind of bravado.

But for the record the Iranian President is not the commander of Iranian Armed forces. The final Decision would be up to the Chief of State and Supreme religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamanei who has already delivered a fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons. And as pointed out in the Juan Cole article-even the Iranian President has stated several times that he would never condone any mass killing of civilian.

But for the sake of argument, if Iran or one of their minions were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel - they would not only desecrate Islamic holy sites, desecrate a land considered sacred to all Muslims--they would kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims; including countless Shiites in southern Lebanon; and this does not include those killed by a retaliatory strike. This is quite implausible

And let us remember, so far their is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is anywhere near such a capacity.

Fishing for a Pretext in Iran

by Juan Cole; March 18, 2006

link: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9929

snip:"Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa or formal religious ruling against nuclear weapons, and President Ahmadinejad at his inauguration denounced such arms and committed Iran to remaining a nonnuclear weapons state."

snip:"Tehran denies having military labs aiming for a bomb, and in November of 2003 the IAEA formally announced that it could find no proof of such a weapons program."

snip:"it is often alleged that since Iran harbors the desire to “destroy” Israel, it must not be allowed to have the bomb. Ahmadinejad has gone blue in the face denouncing the immorality of any mass extermination of innocent civilians, but has been unable to get a hearing in the English-language press. Moreover, the presidency is a very weak post in Iran, and the president is not commander of the armed forces and has no control over nuclear policy"

snip: "in November of 2003 the IAEA formally announced that it could find no proof of such a weapons program. The U.S. reaction was a blustery incredulity, which is not actually an argument or proof in its own right, however good U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is at bunching his eyebrows and glaring."

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientist and the hope of its children. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower