Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reports that Iran may have encountered a snag in enriching uranium. DI writes:
Since you're probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue. It reported that Iran's supply of low-enriched uranium -- the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs -- appears to have certain "impurities" that "could cause centrifuges to fail" if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.
DI then notes that Iran, in getting Russia & France to enrich 1,200 kilograms of uranium to medical grade--19.75 percent (Iran's total known uranium stock is 1,600 kilograms)--is not a concession but a coup: the uranium will be detoxified before being enriched.
DI then concludes that as a result we may have more time than previously thought to stop Iran's nuclear program. One hopes that DI is right both as to the contamination of Iranian centrifuges and also as to our thus having more time to address the Iranian nuclear program. But here are reasons to be less sanguine.
The events inside Iran since June 12's election may result in Iran's Revolutionary Guard supplanting the clerics as prime rulers, which makes traditional deterrence possibly more workable. But a nuclear Iran could stir up trouble in the Mideast whilst our retaliatory options become severely limited. Negotiations will not work, because Iran need not disclose other clandestine nuclear sites yet unknown to us. I fear it is too late for sanctions--partly because under the best of circumstances they take time, and partly because Iran has taken remedial steps--new suppliers of refined oil, plus petroleum stockpiles--that make sanctions far less likely to succeed today, versus even a few years ago.
Ignatius would do well to read an essay, "Can Terrorists Build Nuclear Weapons" (2006), authored by several prominent nuclear weapons designers who worked many years at Los Alamos. These folks--real experts--inform us of this "inconvenient (nuclear) truth": Nuclear weapons can be made with reactor-grade plutonium. Specifically, they write:
With respect to the effects of dilution by isotopes of heavy elements, only the two most obvious cases need be considered. One is that of reactor- grade plutonium. This material is not uniquely specified, since the fractional amount of the Pu-240 depends on the level of exposure of the fuel in the reactor before it is discharged. However, at burn-up levels somewhat higher than present practice, the bare crit of plutonium would be only some 25-35 percent higher than that for pure Pu-239. Because of spontaneous fission, the effect of the Pu-240 on the neutron source in the material is thus likely to be more important than its effect on the critical mass. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons can be made with reactor-grade plutonium.
You will not get the same bang out of contaminated plutonium as with full weapons-grade 94 percent enriched plutonium. You would get what weapons designers call a "fizzle"--pre-detonation before super-critical mass is achieved. Instead of a Hiroshima-size 14-kiloton yield you might get, say, one kiloton. Now hear this: One kiloton was the design objective of the Manhattan Project. It packs the explosive force of 400 Ryder trucks like the one with 5,000 pounds of TNT that on April 19, 1995 destroyed the courthouse in Oklahoma City. It would level a good part of the Wall Street area, and kill probably at least as as many people as died (70,000 - 90,000) at Nagasaki. And it would spray-paint much of the Battery area with highly radioactive contaminants, rendering the area uninhabitable for years, unless hugely expensive cleanup were applied.
As to Iran & outside enrichment to medical-grade enriched uranium: This is superior fuel--because it is more highly enriched--for a bomb than the terror nuke described above. And further enrichment is of course easier starting from from 19.75 percent & going to to 94 percent weapons-grade, than starting from 3.5 percent & going to weapons-grade.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate is under review; that NIE concluded that Iran had suspended work on nuclear weapons, as of 2003. Within six months of its release, the NIE's conclusion had been publicly repudiated by the Bush administration, both Presidential candidates and the intelligence services of three allies (Israel, UK, France). In an interview this week, departing chief UN nuke inspector Muhammad el-Baradei reiterated his contention that Israel is the greatest Mideast threat; lost on the not-so-good inspector is that his lackluster inspection of Iranian facilities is a major reason Israel may feel compelled to act.
In a Washington Post four-pager, nuclear policy maven Joseph Cirincione offers what he calls five myths about Iran's nuclear program: (1) Iran is "on the verge" of developing a nuclear weapon; (2) a military strike could stop Iran's nuclear program; (3) sanctions could "cripple" its program; (4) regime change would end the program; (5) Iran is the main nuclear threat in the Mideast. Re (1) the author may be correct, but in truth, given our lack of knowledge as to the full extent of Iran's program, he presumes to a level of certitude that is unwarranted; also outside his--or anyone's--ambit of knowledge is how much warhead design help Iran may be receiving from outside sources. Re (2) a strike could delay Iran's crossing the nuclear threshold; the author's contention that a strike would cause opponents of the regime to rally is dubious, given the intensity of the protests, albeit a strike gone badly awry that kills massive numbers of civilians would indeed backfire. Re (3) the author is right--it is too late for sanctions to work. Re (4) the author may well be right, but a democratic, liberal government would likely forswear weaponizing, and confine itself to a commercial program. Re (5) the author's reasoning is a hopeless mishmash. He asserts that Iran is not the main threat, but rather a Mideast arms race is. Yet he acknowledges that Israel's nuclear arsenal spurred no nation to start a program, whereas Iran's program has a dozen states starting nuclear programs. Thus, it is clear that the Mideast arms race starting now is a product of Iran's nuclear program, and thus Iran's program is the main threat to nuclear peace in the Mideast. Garry Kasparov writes in a WSJ op-ed that Russia cares more about high oil prices to prop up its sagging economy than it worries about stopping a nuclear Iran; this suggests that a nuclear Iran might well benefit Moscow, with near-zero risk that Russia would be on Iran's nuclear target list.
Apropos of regime change, Thomas Friedman compares 11/9 (the German term for the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall) with 9/11 (ours) and sees people power is the key difference--a type of power all too rare in Muslim lands:
The most important difference between 11/9 and 9/11 is “people power.” Germans showed the world how good ideas about expanding human freedom — amplified by people power — can bring down a wall and an entire autocratic power structure, without a shot. There is now a Dunkin’ Donuts on Paris Square adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate, where all that people power was concentrated. Normally, I am horrified by American fast-food brands near iconic sites, but in the case of this once open sore between East and West, I find it something of a balm. The war over Europe is indeed over. People power won. We can stand down — pass the donuts.
The events of 9/11, by contrast, demonstrated how bad ideas — amplified by a willingness of just a few people to commit suicide — can bring down skyscrapers and tie a great country in knots....
The problem we have in dealing with the Arab-Muslim world today is the general absence or weakness of people power there. There is a low-grade civil war going on inside the Arab-Muslim world today, only in too many cases it is “the South versus the South” — bad ideas versus bad ideas, amplified by violence, rather than bad ideas versus good ideas amplified by people power.
Writing at NRO, Jonah Goldberg pinpoints the one thing, regime change, that can spare us the Iran nuclear menace. JG writes, noting a recent interview that Shirin Ebadi, Iranian dissident who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, gave:
In an interview with the editors of the Washington Post, Ebadi “suggested that the nature of Iran’s regime is more crucial to U.S. security than any specific deals on nuclear energy.”
Her point is precisely the same point made by so-called neoconservatives for years. The problem with Iran is its regime; its nuclear program is merely a symptom of that problem.
Do you lay awake at night worrying about Britain’s nuclear weapons? France’s? Israel’s? Of course not, because stable democracies in general, and stable democratic allies in particular, aren’t a threat.
If your neighbor is an upright and responsible citizen, who cares if he has a gun? If your neighbor is a complete whackjob and criminal, you sure as Shinola care if he has a gun. Armed neighbors aren’t a problem, dangerous ones are. The same logic applies to nations.
“Imagine if the government actually promised to stop its nuclear program tomorrow,” Ebadi told the Post. “Would you trust this government not to start another secret nuclear program somewhere else?”
It’s a profound and fundamental point. We’ve gotten many such promises from the North Koreans. They are worthless. Promises from oppressive regimes cannot be trusted any more than promises from Tony Soprano could be. If a government is willing to betray its own people on a daily basis, what makes anyone think that it won’t betray its geopolitical adversaries?
A democratic Iran--if liberal, not like democratic (at times) Pakistan--could be trusted to forswear nuclear weapons and obey the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory. This is precisely the course that Team Obama seems to have tossed away, preferring to negotiate with a regime that has a 30-year record of breaking its word, and a 25-year record of concealing nuclear matters.
JG chastises (rightly) our peace-prize President, for his reluctance to seek regime change despite growing pressures inside Iran (as evidenced by this weekend's bomb attacks that killed Revolutionary Guard leaders):
Ebadi doesn’t want America to topple the Iranian regime the way it toppled Saddam Hussein’s. Or, if she does, she’s certainly smart enough not to say so outright, given that her family is under constant surveillance by Iranian authorities. What she wants is for America to get its priorities straight. Iran, which has been sponsoring terror for 30 years, is a threat because the Iranian regime is a threat. Change the regime and the threat diminishes or vanishes instantaneously. We had a golden opportunity to accelerate regime change in June, but Obama blinked.
Enamored with the idea that “engagement” with evil will produce good, and convinced that a brutal, undemocratic regime is the legitimate representative of the Iranian people, Obama was slow to recognize the moral authority of the democracy movement. By the time he did say what he should have said at the outset, it was clear that his grudging and qualified support for the protesters had no steel to it. The Iranian regime recognized that it would have a free hand to murder and intimidate its own people in order to reconsolidate power after it stole the election. This was a sad moment for the leader of the free world. “Mr. Obama has extended the hand of friendship to a man who has blood on his hands,” Ebadi told the Post. “He can at least avoid shaking the hand of friendship with him.”
Bottom Line. We simply do not know whether the story about contaminated centrifuges is true. More significantly, we do not know how many more undeclared nuclear facilities--likely, several, as noted in LFTC recently--the Iran is building, and whether such facilities are yet up & running. What we do know is that commercial-grade reactor fuel can make a crude terrorist bomb, and that medical-grade fuel can make a better one. Which suggests that we keep the champagne on ice, until if & when--albeit likely with no help from us--liberal democratic regime change comes to Iran.
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