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Edited by Christian Lowe | Contact

Iran's Bomb: How Close?

A cabal of terrorist-funding, virulently anti-Semitic, nuclear-armed mullahs is bad, no question. Really bad. But just how awful is the awful situation in Iran?

iran_nuclear.jpgThose conflicting, confusing reports in the press are no help. So I begged the Arms Control Wonk, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, to give us some straight answers on three-and-a-half basic questions about Iran:

1. How far is Tehran from getting the Bomb?

2. How easily could that Bomb be attached to missile, and how far can that missile go?

3. How hard would it be for the U.S. or Israel to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities?

Today, the Wonk takes on the first question. The quick answer is that we've probably a little less than a decade until the shit hits the fan, atomically-speaking. Unless the mullahs get really, really lucky. And then it's more like three years until the big showdown.

But don't take my word for it. Go read the whole thing for yourself. Even the math. Even the bit about cascading centrifuges. You'll be a little less unnerved, once you know more about the engineering and the science behind Tehran's nuclear push.

UPDATE 6:22 PM: If the Wonk's analysis made you feel slightly better, this Joe Katzman post should take care of that, quick.

(Big ups: Glenn)

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This is a little fact for Roberts lengthy post at January. A significant detail many americans and also europeans don't seem to understand is the following: the middle east is inhabited by more than Arabs. Iran is not an arab nation. The majority of Iranians are Persians. Ethnic minorities are kurds, Turks and Jews.
It would be wise for americans and others interested, to inform thoroughly about a countries background before makin generalizations. Generalizing all the musilms in Iraq as simply muslims has caused a great deal of trouble for the U.S. who now find themselves with a shiite enpowered nation, sympathetic with Iran.
Just on the side: for those who think Iran's invasion or a nuclear strike against Iranis plauseable, do not forget that this country held back an Iraq that was fully funded and geared up by the technologically more advanced West. Twenty years later the power of the East is matching up to the West. China is now a true militairy power, not only in numbers; but also technologically. As practical as the chinese are; they know that a good arms deal with an oril rich Iran is a very good idea. Besides that; the Russians have equipped Iran with mobile air defence systems capable of taking down just about everything the U.S has, and certainly what ever israel has.
A final note:
Between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans to israel were converted to grants. One third of americans foreign aid goes to israel. On a monthly basis American taxpayers pay one milion us dollars to Israel. And sincs 1949, together with interest this comes down to 133,132 BILION us dollars. The financial aid alone that Israel receives from the US allows it to purchase tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16 war planes, machine guns and bullets. Since 1992, the US has offered Israel an additional $2 billion in loan guarantees every year. n 1997 alone, the total of US grants and loan guarantees to Israel was $5.5 billion, i.e., $15,068,493 per day. American taxpayes and american companies continue funding Israel to the day. Israel does not move an inch without American aid. So , will isreal go to war with Iran? maybe, who knows. One thing's for certain: Israel needs and will always need american aid when it comes to it's militairy power. Who armed them in the first place? certainly not it's neighbours and definately not a post WOII Europe.

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This is to the people who think IRAN is not capable of handling a war on israel. Let me remind u of July 2006 with the little Hizb-Allah.
And what about the person saying that ISRAEL has #1 airforce...well i laugh at his face...IRAN is developing the best DEFENSIVE weapons the world will ever witness....plus have u heard of SYRIA??
u hit IRAN it means u hit SYRIA...can i mean CAN israel handle IRAN & SYRIA ... u can spit in my face when ISRAEL comes out victorious...

Are you wondering and thinking about WWIII
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Allies : USA, ISRAEL, G.B, Other Countries
Axis: N.Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia, China

Winners: Let me hear ur wildest guess....

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Posted by: Khalil at February 8, 2007 08:35 AM


For some naive "thinkers" like denis; if israel "can handle them all alone" then you just proved the Iranian point-then what is the fuss all about? Besides, how many bomb israel do you think needs to be blown to smitherin?

One or two.

Posted by: dondon at December 12, 2006 10:09 PM


Remember...that during the Iran/Iraq War, many in the Iranian leadership (that are still there) encouraged & ordered their own young children to cross border minefields& get themselves blownup, in order to make safe paths for their soldiers to cross over. There is no moral conscience nor regard for life here; no matter what the excuse.
They still do sponser insurgent terrorism, & have little or no regard for their women. What would you think their thoughts would be with regard to using nukes or any WMD in order to reak havoc & mayem in their region, or the World?

Posted by: RockyB. at January 23, 2006 11:06 PM


"You people are incredibly stupid and gullible. Iran does not now have the capacity to make nuclear weapons, and will never have.

Posted by: Elmore at January 21, 2006 11:39 PM"

I dont believe the phrase, "I know you are but what am I?" has ever applied any better than in this case.
Iran possesses all the necessary technology, and the know how to make and carryout nuclear warfare. They are not idiots and they certainly have no reservations about sacrifice to their people. It takes time to refine and implement these items but they've had time, and now they are just finishing the process they started before the UN lockouts were in place. Iran has both launched satalites into space(step one in an ICBM project) and actively pursued refineing nuclear material to weapons grade status. This is not a matter of will they posess these weapons but when, unless something changes drastically with the world political view on Iran.
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Posted by: Denis at January 22, 2006 09:52 AM


You people are incredibly stupid and gullible. Iran does not now have the capacity to make nuclear weapons, and will never have.

Posted by: Elmore at January 21, 2006 11:39 PM


Katzman is a loon. Where is the basis for his assumption that the majority of Iranians are pro-American and anti-mullah? The Iranian people had a chance last year to elect a more moderate leader and did not. They chose the most radical of the candidates for the same reason that Iraq stuck with Saddam through the 90's and the British people didn't "break" as Goering predicted and the Germans didn't "break" as Bomber Harris predicted. A nation under external pressure will always close ranks against the outsiders.

Iran will continue to back extremist leaders for as long as they feel themselves under attack. The 90's being relatively quiet, they backed increasingly moderate politicians. And then Iraq got invaded and US government officials began sneering that "real men want to go to Iran." Do you reckon that makes them feel threatened? Do you really expect them to back down from a threat? Didn't any of you guys ever have recess? You don't back down...you go ahead and take the beating and get up smiling. Iran will absorb the airstrikes and rebuild. They will retaliate with whatever weapons they have at hand. Terrorism, most likely. The Iranian moderates will be further eclipsed.

Katzman's analysis is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Iran is a mortal enemy, therefore Iran must be attacked. Only in the fevered heads of the neocons does this end with Iran reconciling with the US. "The Germans seemed to think that the best way to turn a neighbor into a friend was by threatening him," wrote Barbara Tuchman of the Kaiser's foreign policy. The Iranians may be poor players at geopolitics but that's no excuse for us to show the same poor judgement. It's quite possible to get out of this without war. Assuming the inevitability of war closes out constructive engagement.

Posted by: James at January 20, 2006 11:11 PM


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Rather to deal with their & the pundits song & dances, and any conventional repurcussions; than to deal with a certain domino effect exchange of nuclear weapon launches. If & when that ever happens, anyone with any sanity should seek most probable ground zeros. To be a survivor after would be the most terrible thing anyone could ever wish upon themselves....

Posted by: RockyB. at January 20, 2006 09:56 PM


This is from something I wrote and posted elsewhere a few days ago. I’ll take the time to read the information posted here, but I wanted to submit my little comments first, so as not to be influenced too easily to change my opinion.

As did many others in America, I grew up during the midst of the Cold War. I developed a healthy fear of atomic weapons, and on rare occasions I sometimes actually took a moment to wonder how afraid I would actually be if I saw multiple mushroom clouds billowing on every horizon. I concluded that I would be petrified, but that there wouldn’t be much I could do about it, except to do what everybody else was doing; try to locate the members of my family, and try to survive. In the utter chaos that would ensue, neither proposition would be very likely to succeed. And besides, I lived in what would have been a target city, so in all likelihood I would have been instantly vaporized anyway. But I would, in any case, have had about thirty seconds or so to watch the mushroom cloud rise over Chicago, eighty miles to the south, before I was enveloped within one of my own.

As an adult I developed what might be considered by some as a kind of morbid curiosity about nuclear weapons, and much worse than those, thermonuclear weapons. I read volumes about how the Atomic Bomb, and a short time later the Hydrogen Bomb were originally conceived, designed, built and tested; about great men with names like Fermi, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Bethe and many, many others. How such great men could conceive of such a monstrous device was beyond my understanding. Even to some of them, though they were intimately involved in its making, it was an almost inconceivable contradiction. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project once quoted a scripture from the text of the Indian manuscript, The Bhagavad Gita which reads, “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Unlike his military counterparts, and even some of his scientific colleagues, he understood the devastating power of these weapons; but above all he knew that we were headed toward an arms race which once, during what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, brought the world to the point of nuclear brinkmanship, bordering on all out nuclear war between America and the then Soviet Union. Never before or since, has the world been so close to nuclear Armageddon.

It would be easy to misunderstand my mindset toward nuclear weapons in general, and our use of them against the Japanese during World War Two, in particular. I think it was wrong to use them, right? Wrong; because under the circumstances prevailing at the time, there was literally no other reasonable or logical choice that President Truman had open to him. I believe that placed in the midst of that situation, any sane and competent leader would have done the exact same thing. All this talk about the United States making an apology to Japan to me is ridiculous, and simply reflects a lack of understanding of history as it really was.

The relatively small yield atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as terrible as they were, in fact did end America’s war with the Japanese military machine. These bombs, the “gun-type,” uranium bomb, and the “implosion-type,” plutonium bomb used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, were relatively low yield (kiloton-range) atomic devices, probably of the type Iran seeks to develop and employ, primarily against, you guessed it, Israel. Of course, they’ve made no secret of that. This would have devastating consequences for Israel, who would in turn unleash their much more formidable nuclear arsenal on Iran. The firs domino having been knocked down, the rest would soon follow. The Arab world, in defense of Iran, would be drawn into the conflict like moths to a flame on a summer evening. The likely scenario would be that the following countries would take up arms against Israel, the United States and her allies: Middle Eastern Arab Nations; Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Jordan; North African Arab Nations; Ethiopia and Libya; Southern European Arab Nations; Turkey. And last but by no means least, the formidable nuclear and conventional armament of Russia itself. As to who North Korea would side with, all I can say is that it wouldn’t be the United States and her few remaining allies, most of whom will have tried to “safely” distance themselves from us. This is not a recipe for cookie dough, my friends, it is a recipe for World War Three, and the ingredients are all there; they just haven’t been thoroughly mixed yet.

If that sounds a little far fetched, imagine what you would have thought on September 10th, 2001 if someone said to you that by noon tomorrow, the world trade center complex would be laying in rubble on the ground, and 2,986 Americans, mostly civilians would be laying dead in the streets. I know I would have just laughed and told them to go home and take a cold shower and drink some hot coffee.

Posted by: Robert at January 20, 2006 08:46 PM


This is from something I wrote and posted elsewhere a few days ago. I’ll take the time to read the information posted here, but I wanted to submit my little comments first, so as not to be influenced too easily to change my opinion.

As did many others in America, I grew up during the midst of the Cold War. I developed a healthy fear of atomic weapons, and on rare occasions I sometimes actually took a moment to wonder how afraid I would actually be if I saw multiple mushroom clouds billowing on every horizon. I concluded that I would be petrified, but that there wouldn’t be much I could do about it, except to do what everybody else was doing; try to locate the members of my family, and try to survive. In the utter chaos that would ensue, neither proposition would be very likely to succeed. And besides, I lived in what would have been a target city, so in all likelihood I would have been instantly vaporized anyway. But I would, in any case, have had about thirty seconds or so to watch the mushroom cloud rise over Chicago, eighty miles to the south, before I was enveloped within one of my own.

As an adult I developed what might be considered by some as a kind of morbid curiosity about nuclear weapons, and much worse than those, thermonuclear weapons. I read volumes about how the Atomic Bomb, and a short time later the Hydrogen Bomb were originally conceived, designed, built and tested; about great men with names like Fermi, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Bethe and many, many others. How such great men could conceive of such a monstrous device was beyond my understanding. Even to some of them, though they were intimately involved in its making, it was an almost inconceivable contradiction. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project once quoted a scripture from the text of the Indian manuscript, The Bhagavad Gita which reads, “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Unlike his military counterparts, and even some of his scientific colleagues, he understood the devastating power of these weapons; but above all he knew that we were headed toward an arms race which once, during what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, brought the world to the point of nuclear brinkmanship, bordering on all out nuclear war between America and the then Soviet Union. Never before or since, has the world been so close to nuclear Armageddon.

It would be easy to misunderstand my mindset toward nuclear weapons in general, and our use of them against the Japanese during World War Two, in particular. I think it was wrong to use them, right? Wrong; because under the circumstances prevailing at the time, there was literally no other reasonable or logical choice that President Truman had open to him. I believe that placed in the midst of that situation, any sane and competent leader would have done the exact same thing. All this talk about the United States making an apology to Japan to me is ridiculous, and simply reflects a lack of understanding of history as it really was.

The relatively small yield atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as terrible as they were, in fact did end America’s war with the Japanese military machine. These bombs, the “gun-type,” uranium bomb, and the “implosion-type,” plutonium bomb used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, were relatively low yield (kiloton-range) atomic devices, probably of the type Iran seeks to develop and employ, primarily against, you guessed it, Israel. Of course, they’ve made no secret of that. This would have devastating consequences for Israel, who would in turn unleash their much more formidable nuclear arsenal on Iran. The firs domino having been knocked down, the rest would soon follow. The Arab world, in defense of Iran, would be drawn into the conflict like moths to a flame on a summer evening. The likely scenario would be that the following countries would take up arms against Israel, the United States and her allies: Middle Eastern Arab Nations; Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Jordan; North African Arab Nations; Ethiopia and Libya; Southern European Arab Nations; Turkey. And last but by no means least, the formidable nuclear and conventional armament of Russia itself. As to who North Korea would side with, all I can say is that it wouldn’t be the United States and her few remaining allies, most of whom will have tried to “safely” distance themselves from us. This is not a recipe for cookie dough, my friends, it is a recipe for World War Three, and the ingredients are all there; they just haven’t been thoroughly mixed yet.

If that sounds a little far fetched, imagine what you would have thought on September 10th, 2001 if someone said to you that by noon tomorrow, the world trade center complex would be laying in rubble on the ground, and 2,986 Americans, mostly civilians would be laying dead in the streets. I know I would have just laughed and told them to go home and take a cold shower and drink some hot coffee.

Posted by: Robert at January 20, 2006 08:43 PM


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