The Manly Men And Tehran's Uranium

By Cernig

Rupert Murdoch's UK cable news network, Sky News, is today the latest conservative outlet to recycle the International Institute for Strategic Studies claim that Iran will have enough uranium for a nuclear weapon inside a year. And, rather predictably, the "real men go to Tehran" crowd, dead set to vicariously prove their manliness through bloodshed, are lapping it up. Especially since those most testosterone-challenged among their number can relate this story to their bigoted, Blimpish notion that "President Hussain" shouldn't talk to Arabs before he's talked to Americans - as if it were truly more important to stroke American egos than to engage those who live in the world's boiling pot of violence.

But the spin on the IISS study simply isn't true. As the IISS itself says "being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having a nuclear weapon." The IAEA has been unable to find any signs of a current Iranian wqeapons program and the June 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which is still the official opinion of the US intelligence community, says there isn't one. 

(And let's not forget that the IISS were the folks who, in 2002, put out a report detailling Iraq's supposedly extensive WMD holdings and wrote that "The retention of WMD capacities by Iraq is self-evidently the core objective of the regime.")

Indeed, Iran would have to engage in months of additional enrichment on their current stock to turn it from low-enriched uranium, which is useless for bomb making, into weapons-grade material. The IAEA has guaranteed that it would know the moment that was attempted, because all known Iranian enrichment facilities and uranium stocks are under IAEA seal and 24 hour surveillance. The only way Iran could "break out" to a nuclear weapon without months of forewarning is if they had equal or greater secret stocks of uranium and centrifuge cascades. That's remotely possible - but considering the expense and technical difficulty it's massively unlikely. Still, the same people who believe Saddam spirited his WMD away to Syria on the eve of invasion will believe it.

It would be far truer, in other words, to say that Iran won't have sufficient stocks of uranium for a bomb inside a year. It's the wrong sort of uranium. There's no sign whatsoever that Iran intends it for other than peaceful use.

It would be nice of folks like President Obama could break out of the spin cycle on this, but it appears to be politically unappetising to them. Let's face it, standing up and telling the truth would be more courageous than simply repeating the rightwing spin that Iran wants a bomb - and holds far more political risk if it turns out naysayers are wrong. The only risk if the warmongers are wrong is a waste of more US blood and treasure, and hundreds of thousands more foreigners killed, in another imperial adventure. And they're just waiting for Obama's diplomacy to fail while poisoning the well at every opportunity to ensure it does. Oh yeah, "faster, please"!

 /snark.

Comments

[Peter G.]

In fact Iran has enough uranium to make dozens if not hundreds of bombs. The vast majority of it happens to be thinly distributed in rock in concentrations that range from 200 to 500ppm but they do have it. As it happens I've found your citations on the subject quite persuasive but I still think the situation requires a wary eye. A uranium bomb is remarkably easy to make.

[BJ Bjornson]

I don't know what your definition of "remarkably easy" is, Peter, but in a sense you're right. So long as you can get your hands on sufficient quantities of weapons-grade uranium, (which is where the non-proliferation efforts are concentrated so as to avoid such a scenario), building a shotgun-type uranium bomb isn't that hard. Of course, while it may be one of the easiest nuclear weapons to build, its size and weight make it one the hardest to build a delivery system for. Something the Iranians are also nowhere near close to having.

[Peter G.]

Not to be fussy but as unwieldy as such a simple Uranium bomb would be it does require nothing more than a shipping container to get it where it needs to go. Other than that I quite agree with you.