Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb

Source: NY 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.

The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.

But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/world/middleeast/04nuke.html

No. Because Pakistan and NK actually has nukes, and we don't mess with nuke-possessing nations.

Having all this information out there might encourage countries who may have opposed sanctions to support them.

That's what this article is about.

Are you saying that Iran has the right to pursue nuclear weapons because of Israel?

Not Jews ,Isreal

Who hasn't seen the schematic for a nuclear weapon yet?

:hi:

Because it's probably pretty easy to find what guidance they would need on the Internet.

I would chalk this UN report up to a fail.

Any half-decent college physics student can figure out the data. The biggest atomic "secret" was let out on Aug. 6, 1945-it works.
Take about 10 kilos of weapons grade Uranium or Plutonium and slap it together hard enough, you get Hiroshima-sized boom.
The hard part is not in building the device itself, it's getting the 10 kilos.

Data of Mass Destruction. Or something.

now, I think.

(Very heavy).

When North Korea tested its first nuke, there was a lot of speculation that it was faked with conventional explosives or that it was a dud which fizzled. Even after atmospheric samples showed the signature of a nuclear detonation, there was still speculation that it had been faked by using a "dirty bomb".
There are a number of scientists in India claiming that their own nuclear tests were duds,
read about it here: http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3227827

but for that all you need are some competent (conventional) explosives experts. This makes a garage-built plutonium device not quite as easy as it is sometimes depicted, but well within the reach of any government.

If you're working with uranium, you'll want to be sure you've got your gun-type mechanism properly calibrated, but to a great extent the information you will need is in the public domain. If anyone ever builds a working nuke in their basement, it will probably be a uranium bomb.

This is for crude devices. Given that I've never had a security clearance and worked in the weapons field, and none of my professors who did ever chose to hint at some of the secret breakthroughs that have led to ultra efficient miniaturized modern weaponry, I don't know what it takes to create a state of the art nuclear device. Given that Iran has plenty of Ph.D. physicists, and that what they can't figure out by themselves might well be for sale by a hungry former Soviet weapons designer, I would not consider it extraordinary if Iran already knows how to make a shiny modern bomb.

The article from India seems to be about whether or not an Indian thermonuclear weapon ever actually ignited its fusion stage. A fusion weapon is harder to make than a fission weapon (though not so much harder that the design should be a problem for a nation). If the fusion stage fails to ignite you will still get a very significant yield-- hardly a "dud" in any reasonable sense of the word (the US's first thermonuclear "fizzle" -- Castle Koon-- had a yield almost ten times that of the Hiroshima bomb). And in any case, fizzles and duds are a part of the nuke-designing business. The US, during the nuclear testing era, had them -- after all, if there was no question about a new weapons design, why would you test it? Iran, if it ever gets the bomb, will have some of its own.

Who got all the "data" to do so back in 1976? I do. His brother lived in my dorm and told us there would be "something interesting" on the nightly news.

"Phillips' design was not functional<1>."

He bought all the part at a radio shack for Christ sakes.

Besides didn't Iran turn over those blue prints from AQ Kahn to the IAEA.

Somebody is pumping up a lie here. Big difference between "information to be able to design and produce a workable atom bomb"
and having bomb grade nuclear material. The design of a A bomb is 64 year old technology.

Iran does not have the infrastructure needed to enrich Uranium to bomb grade material.

http://www.juancole.com/

scroll down to the 10/1 posting.

I smell AIPAC, neocons, and the military / industry complex behind this shit.

Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

except
The suicide bombing of the American embassy in Beirut (18 April. 83), which killed 61 people and left more than 120 wounded.
The suicide bombing of the Marines headquarters in Beirut (23 Oct.83), which killed 39 and wounded 40 people.
The suicide bombing of the French army barracks in Beirut (23 Oct. 83), which killed 74 and wounded about 15.

waging proxy wars through the Hezbollah and Hamas and now high scale in Northern Yemen.
In 1981, Iran supported an attempt to overthrow the Bahraini government. In 1983, Iran expressed political support for Shi'ites who bombed Western embassies in Kuwait.

Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

yep, because they produce their own military stuff, since they can't buy anything expensive abroad. The spending per capita is 8%. in France it's 4%. Comparing apples and oranges. Iran has forces totally amounting to about 945,000 active military personnel , France or the UK 250 000 each, comparable population.

The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended

One needs at least 12 active plants to make enrichment economically profitable for peaceful purposes. Sweden has 12 plants and doesn't enrich its own uranium, because it's cheaper to buy it abroad including recycling. It ensures that the IAEA has the monitoring of all steps too.

The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility

that's exactly what Iran did. The new facility isn't situated openly on an environmentally suitable place, but on a Revolutionary Guard military missile test range, and partly dug up in hills. And the Iranians conveniently forgot to mention it for the IAEA for five years. Oops.

Why should we alarmed by Iran's secret program but not Israels? How do you rectify that under the UN Charter than mandates that the sovereignty of every country be equal?

...is so foolproof that the US Army Air Force, sixty years ago, didn't even bother to field-test it, going straight to combat use.

A state A&M engineering department and a copy of Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb is all you really need. There's a reason why arms control efforts center on keeping tabs on fissile material and not scientists.

The US needs to leave the Middle East to those who live there. Get the US, along with the oil companies, and things will calm down A LOT in that part of the world.

Well put. It's our threatening and actual INVASION of two countries which has the rest of the countries with valuable natural resources running scared. For example, nobody's beating the war drums to invade North Korea. Why? They have a kick ass Army, Nuclear weapons and no oil reserves. The rest of the world is taking notes and the lesson they are deriving is: If you have Oil (are you listening Venezuela?), then get nuclear weapons a.s.a.p. lest the USA invade you.

its over

It makes the U.S. security apparatus want to kill you.

The media seems to be coalescing around a narrative that Iran poses an imminent threat. This is how the last war started. The drips and drabs add up until we're told we have no choice but to act.