Report Claims Iran Has Data To Build a Nuclear Bomb 630
reporter writes "According to a startling report just covered by the New York Times, 'senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable atom bomb.' In 2007, American intelligence erroneously concluded that Tehran in 2003 stopped further research into designing a nuclear bomb. This conclusion was contradicted by German, French, and Israeli intelligence. Recently, London also concluded that the American assessment is incorrect. So, here we are. The Iranians have the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb and have been working relentlessly to perfect its design. Tehran is apparently able to create the components (e.g. enriched uranium) that can be assembled into such a weapon. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is communicating with the Kremlin about a list of Russian scientists it believes are assisting Iran's efforts to develop the bomb."
So have I (Score:1, Informative)
And, as mentioned above, pretty much everyone with an internet access and a curious mind.
Even without it, with a little help from a Finite Element Analysis software and the most basic equation from Particle physics and theoretical chemistry, pretty much anyone can aquire the Data to build the bomb.
The Manhattan project used punchcard analog computers and human calculators (google it) to derive the necessary data, every desktop computer has much more calculating power.
However this is not the issue. The issue is how to apply this knowledge, this is what eats up all the budget of most Nuclear programs. Its not enough to know how to separate the uranium isotopes with a gas centrifuge, you have to build it, actually several thousands of them, and even then it will take years.
IMHO its not about the Data we should be worried, its about whether or not they have the necessary hardware to apply this data.
Re:Internet access (Score:5, Informative)
Right, because nukes are so impossibly hard to build that a layman, say a truck driver, couldn't possibly figure out how gen 1 atomic bombs were constructed.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_samuels
Re:Why shouldnt Iran have a Abomb in the first pla (Score:1, Informative)
This is an utterly ridiculous thing to say. The standard US warhead, the W88, has a yield of 475 kilotons. That gives it a third degree burn radius of only nine kilometres.
Do you really think it's impossible to deploy a weapon with a nine kilometre radius of effect without causing 99% civilian casualties? Really? Of course it isn't. That's not to say that they wouldn't, in most scenarios, be deployed against urban areas and cause huge civilian casualties, because they would. But huge civilian casualties isn't a property inherent to the weapon itself! It doesn't spawn a few hundred thousand civilians ready to be incinerated, you have to fire it at an area full of civilians!
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no.
The USA used the Bomb to avoid killing millions of people. Instead, we killed a couple hundred thousand between the two Bombs (we killed more people bombing Tokyo than both Bombs killed), and saved a few million of our own people (sorry, in the calculus of war, casualties on your side count for more than casualties on the other side).
As well as saving the millions of Japanese that would have been killed if we'd invaded the Home Islands. Not, I think, that we had nearly as much interest in saving Japanese civilians as in saving the lives of the American soldiers who would've died in an invasion.
Israel is an Atrocity Factory (Score:2, Informative)
Israel commits crimes that make Iranian transgression look like shoplifting by comparison.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vjJ5fOtvksM/SWYvR4IFthI/AAAAAAAAAAU/AcXQzvRoxsw/S1600-R/headline9637e7.jpg [blogspot.com]
They are a house of horrors, paid for by the endless U.S. debt.
Who they are:
http://www.itisapartheid.org/ [itisapartheid.org]
http://politicaltheatrics.org/2009/10/01/binyamin-council-head-jews-arabs-should-have-separate-roads/ [politicaltheatrics.org]
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Israeli-Army-T-Shirts-Mock-Killing-Palestinian-Women-And-Children-During-Gaza-Offensive/Article/200903315245946 [sky.com]
What they do:
http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/30/israeli-army-terrorizes-teenagers-inside-a-school [kawther.info]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253198149221&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull [jpost.com]
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:2, Informative)
Re:US Intelligence (Score:3, Informative)
Now they can't use harsh interrogation methods, and are threatened with prosecution for past practices. I don't blame them for failures; I blame Congress.
Silly me, I thought there were actual scientific studies showing that those methods don't work.
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:5, Informative)
For roughly 400 days they Iranians held those hostages. Why? Nobody remembers why, but they did it - and if nobody remembers why, it must not have been a very memorable reason (if any.)
Yeah, something about a military coup d'etat organized by the United States that overthrew their democratically-elected prime minister. Obviously, not very memorable.
Jerusalem?? (Score:3, Informative)
What's that bit about Jerusalem? Maybe Israel changed its capital to a city that is a point of discord with Palestine, without anyone but the poster noticing :)
Re:Why shouldnt Iran have a Abomb in the first pla (Score:3, Informative)
The only way to use the A-bomb is to kill civilans en masse. Theres no military use of an A-bomb without 99% civil casualties.
That is not even close to being true, the B6Mod10 nuclear bomb [wikipedia.org] has had the dial a yield [wikipedia.org] feature since the 1960's alowing the yeilds to be set to 0.3, 5, 10 or 80 Kt and the Mod11 is designed for bunker busting. Variants of the W54 [wikipedia.org] range from 10 tons (note not KiloTons) to 1KT. All of these have a sufficiently low yield to allow a carefully planed and executed Nuclear event to occur without excessive civilian casualties, unless you count civilian nuclear centrifuge technicians. Hell we could probably drop a dialed down B61Mod11 into a centrifuge facility and they'd never be able to prove they were even nuked.
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:5, Informative)
"The pre-1948 violence was mutual."
I really don't know how you can draw that conclusion. No Israeli villages were massacred, no Israeli village was simply wiped from the map, and it's name forgotten. No Israeli prisoners or bodies were dragged through the streets, for people to gawk at, spit at, and curse.
"The bombings were unfortunate, however, the state of Israel later disclaimed any responsibility for acts of terrorism and, AFAIK, did not support any of them."
What you are actually pointing out is, Israel won the propaganda war. Former terrorists were elected to head Israel's government, and others were held up as heros. Israel can no more disclaim responsibility for the terrorism of it's activists than the US can "disclaim" the anti-slavery activists before the Civil War.
I won't defend Iran's funding of Hamas, or Iran's denial of the holocaust - but I can't see that it is any worse than the activities of Zionists prior to 1950. There simply aren't any good guys in the conflict. Only fools believe either side to be innocent, or good.
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:3, Informative)
As does both Lebanon's Prime Minister, and President, so unless you're claiming that they're representing Hezbollah, and not Lebanon, that's false.
Since both the Prime Minister and the President of Lebanon have stated Lebanon has a claim to the area, the first part of the statement is completely incorrect. And as for Syria being totally silent, that's crap. They've not been "totally silent", they've been contradictory in their statements, at times agreeing to Lebanon's claim, at other times not.
Except that Syria does formally recognise Lebanon: Syria formalised diplomatic ties, opened an embassy in Beirut, and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem stated explicitly that this signified recognition of Lebanon's independence.
Re:Mod parent Informative. (Score:1, Informative)
The Cost of Israel to US Taxpayers
By Richard H. Curtiss
Former U.S. Foreign Service Officer
October 03, 2009 "WRMEA" -- For many years the American media said that "Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid" or that "Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid." Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies--true lies.
Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that "Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid." That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.
One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more than a generation.
Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and they don't.
The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and the foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that includes aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases, but never cuts. But no one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all of the others are developing nations which either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give back land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300.
All four of those European countries have contributed a very large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized an ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four send funds and volunteers to do economic development and emergency relief work in other less fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year.
AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization, which organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes support for Israel among members of the traditionally left-of-ce
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:4, Informative)
And I really have no idea about Spain.
Here, the church is fighting with teeth and claws to maintain their level of influence, but to me it seems that since Franco died it is declining steadily. For instance, Since 2005 Spain allows same-sex marriages and adoption of children.
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:2, Informative)
The US and Israel each have more UN resolutions against them than the rest of the general assembly combined.
Re:Not the first middle east nuke (Score:4, Informative)
The why goes back to 1953 and an event codenamed "Operation Ajax" which involved a CIA backed coup to remove Iran's democratic government and install a (US friendly) dictator. This dictator was ousted, by popular revolution, in 1979. The US Embassy was an obvious target given both the initial coup and the continued CIA connections to SAVAK.
Re:So does everybody (Score:3, Informative)
could someone furnish us with a link?
The Nth Country Experiment [wikipedia.org] in the mid-1960s was three people, one of whom left fairly early, all physics post-docs but none with weapons experience. None were given access to classified information. The conclusions were redacted when the original report was declassified, but most experts seem to believe that the group produced a workable design for an implosion-type device.
Israel more trustworthy than Iran? (Score:5, Informative)
"Israel deserves more trust than Iran? Are you serious?"
I don't know about him, but I am, absolutely.
"Iran has not, in recent military history, conducted a single war of aggression against its neighbours
No, they've been smart enough to let terrorist proxy groups like Hezbollah do it for them, groups funded, trained, and equipped by Iran. And taking over an embassy is considered an act of war. And I was in the area when they unilaterally tried to cut off traffic in the Persian Gulf [wikipedia.org], and one of their mines almost sank the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts. No, no aggression against other states there.
For all of its history, most of Israel's neighbors have denied its right to exist, and sworn to push them into the sea. They've attacked them literally since the day the Jewish state was founded. After several failed invasions, Jordan and Egypt now have peace treaties with Israel that recognize her right to exist. There's been no wars with those countries since then. Syria, however, tired of losing to Israel in conventional warfare, conquered Lebanon and made it a vassal state... which it has stayed, from one degree to another ever since... and continues to launch attacks on Israel from that territory, using its terrorist proxies to do the dirty work. Want to keep Israel out of Lebanon? Keep Syria out of Lebanon.
Israel, on the other hand, have no such doctrine, and history demonstrates they have adopted a first strike policy.
Considering that in every major war, Israel was invaded by surrounding states, you honestly think this is bad? Are you going to seriously make the argument that taking out Saddam Hussein's nuclear facilities (which were going to produce weapons-grade material) wasn't a smart thing to do?
Iran has been co-operating with the IAEA - not flawlessly, and there are problems, but they have been co-operating.
Yeah, they've been cooperating so closely that they built a second uranium enrichment facility [bloomberg.com] that stayed secret until now.
Iran does not deny the holocaust took place
Wow
Re:Mod parent Informative. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/israel/israel_economy.html [theodora.com]
GDP (purchasing power parity):
$200.7 billion (2008 est.)
$193.2 billion (2007)
$183.3 billion (2006)
note: data are in 2008 US dollars
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/world/middleeast/17israel.html [nytimes.com]
Israel to Get $30 Billion in Military Aid From U.S.
This is a better breakdown, year by year:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/114bill.html [ifamericansknew.org]
This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion.
It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of U.S. direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel's cost to the U.S. or the American taxpayer, nor of the benefits to Israel of U.S. aid.
One or two percent of GDP? Hmmmmm - how many nations are donating that much to MY country? I can't recall any headlines proclaiming the generosity of foreign nations giving aid to the United States.
Re:More proof (Score:2, Informative)
Pakistan isn't a member of the non-proliferation treaty and didn't receive special benefits of it like Iran did. If your going with the tired old "So and so does it, why can't they" argument, you should at least investigate why they are being denied the ability to make nuclear arms. It's because they signed a treaty claiming they wouldn't and received payment in the terms of certain favorable trade deals with member countries.
I'm not going to address some of your other misgivings and implications.
Re:Tehran can build a nuclear bomb. (Score:5, Informative)
You got modded up for this bullshit?
The same Israelis that have constantly warred with their neighbors
You mean the same Israelis that have warred with their neighbors after being invaded by those neighbors, right?
The same Israelis who now threaten to bomb Iran, despite Iran having been non-aggressive for more than 20 years
How is sponsoring terrorist organizations compatible with being "non-aggressive"?
The same Israelis who claim Iran hates the Jewish faith, despite Iran having a sizable number of citizens who are Jews that it has never bothered?
Yeah, except for the tens of thousands [latimes.com] of Iranian Jews that got driven out of the country during the Iranian revolution and whom now primarily reside in Israel and the United States. I guess being forced into exile is your definition of "not being bothered".
Re:So, where is your proof of that? (Score:2, Informative)
Are you seriously trolling this?
Fear mongering? Where? Perhaps you're unfamiliar with relatively recent Earth history.
a) extrapolates from Iran's engineering capabilities known from Iran's own announcements as collaborated by external observation and analysis by Rand, Jane's, FAS, etc. and follows the common science/engineering advancement trajectory. Start reading around Iran's helicopter industry adventures in the 1970s.
b) missile test photos from last year show plausible progress; a delivery system that works for nuclear payloads will work for other easier payloads; detante worked out well enough that we can have this discussion.
c) USA, Russia and Germany all got to nuclear capabilities with almost no computers, inefficient power and instrumentation, and far less precise kit than we have today. South Africa, India and China also managed.
d) You are replying to a story about an ongoing series of political disagreements by the usual suspects about nuclear capabilities. "Covert" doesn't mean that your head has been in the sand since Gorby was in power.
e) What's the higher value target? Highly refined material manufactured by professionals intended for weapons use stored at hundreds of languishing sites around the world protected by bureaucratic accounting, or uncle Mahmoud's pile of prototype output where every gram is tracked by the site chief? Wikipedia has some starter links about IAEA's work around missing sources and unintended exposure.