Ex-Israeli Intelligence says Iran has Components to Build Nuclear Bomb

[F3d]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01...#ixzz1jsn2FnlW

Wouldn't be surprised if our intelligence is off. If they can, I wonder if this means a strike is futile, since the media has been reporting that if they get too far, it'll only hamper the nuclear program by a year or two.

[eleganz]

THE D.O.D. DISAGREES!


Nothing to see here folks

[F3d]

How would you know who is right? It's a guessing game if you look back at the intelligence gathered about Iraq.

[luctor-et-emergo]

Sun Tzu's - The Art of War says;

'All warfare is based on deception.'

Hence you seem strong when you are weak, and you appear weak when you are strong. You talk peace when you are about to attack, and you talk war when you desperately want to maintain peace.

[J_White]

is he same as those "experts" who told us about WMD in Iraq, with the images of those chem trucks etc ?

[everlasticity]

you talk war when you desperately want to maintain peace.

For our sake I hope you are right.

[centure7]

Iran has the WMDs! Get them! First Iraq tried to send a nuke to the USA and they have failed. Now Iran will too try to nuke us but God wants us to nuke them all! God is on our side and if you want to follow the constitution, it sounds like you could be a terrorist and should get nuked too along with em'! What America needs is a war with Iran and cameras in every bathroom to prevent miscreant sex acts!

[papitosabe]

I believe they either have them or are close and not based on any info from MSM. The december *IAEA* report says they don't have one but they've stated they don't have all the facts needed for the full accessment. And I think thats why RP basically he said it doesn't bother him if they did. IF they do have one, I still think its for protection as RP has implied. Its not to nuke us like Santorum or Bachmann have said or to nuke Israel. For them to nuke anyone would be stupid, but to have one as protection from attack makes perfect sense.

[Krugerrand]

And we all know Israeli Intelligence would never lie.

[papitosabe]

And we all know Israeli Intelligence would never lie.

either would Iran

[unknown]

For our sake I hope you are right.

For whose sake?

[Krugerrand]

either would Iran

I can't say I'd trust either of them ... or care much about what either of them say.

[Dr.3D]

Even if Iran has "the bomb", how would they deliver it? Are they going to have UPS knock on the door and hand us the package?

The Soviet Union and China had/have "the bomb" and for some mysterious reason, they never decided to use it.

[Brown Sapper]

I don't mean to Israel bash but weren't they the same ones that fed us faulty intelligence to go into Iraq?

[papitosabe]

Even if Iran has "the bomb", how would they deliver it? Are they going to have UPS knock on the door and hand us the package?

The Soviet Union and China had/have "the bomb" and for some mysterious reason, they never decided to use it.

I think they recently got some missiles that would get by early warning systems, but I don't think they're ICBMs...

[boneyard bill]

The statement is too vague to be meaningful. Do they have enriched uranium? Yes. Do they have weapons-grade uranium? Doubtful. Do they have the capability of producing it? Probably not. How long would it take them to develop that capacity? No one really knows. But the fact that they have some enriched uranium could be claimed to be a "component." Without specifics and a time frame, the statement can refer to just about anything.

[RickyJ]

Iran can take out most of Israel now without a nuclear bomb!

Wake up people, this provocation of Iran has absolutely nothing to do with Iran getting a nuclear bomb and everything to do with the elite bankers wanting to start WW3!

[thetruthhurtsthefed]

Ya, well high school science labs have "components" to make a nuclear weapon.....a centrifuge is one component. oh oh so is a frickin' thermometer! What "components" are they referring to and do they have ALL the "components" to actually make something. Hell, a garage sale may have "components" to make just about anything.....better call on the US airforce and initiate some air strikes on these "terrorists" were are training in high school and at sunday afternoon garage sales.
Through deception thou shall create war.

[Krugerrand]

Ya, well high school science labs have "components" to make a nuclear weapon.....a centrifuge is one component. oh oh so is a frickin' thermometer! What "components" are they referring to and do they have ALL the "components" to actually make something. Hell, a garage sale may have "components" to make just about anything.....better call on the US airforce and initiate some air strikes on these "terrorists" were are training in high school and at sunday afternoon garage sales.
Through deception thou shall create war.

While many people will read what you just said and think "well, that makes sense." If our elected officials read it, they'll call for investigations into garage sales.

[Xchange]

Decision to Attack Iran Is ‘Far Off,’ Israel Says
By ISABEL KERSHNER and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: January 18, 2012

Ehud Barak the Israeli defense minister asserting that any decision on a possible pre-emptive military strike on Iranian targets was “very far off.”

“The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said, adding, “They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/wo...agewanted=1&hp

[Aurave]

I will never understand the misrepresenting of the facts and reality going on in the American media. I will never understand how an admittedly free press regurgitates the government propaganda more faithfully than the state owned media in Iran does.

Everything Iran has been doing, has been out in the public. All of their facilities are under watch by IAEA. All stocks of uranium are under strict observation. Iran publicly claims it will start enriching uranium to 20% domestically. A few weeks later the IAEA confirms that Iran is doing what it said. Somehow this is turned into proof that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program. This is an Orwellian world we live in. Either way you can't make a nuclear weapon with uranium enriched to 20%, it needs to be further enriched to around 90% and this is no simple and easy task with all the 20% enriched uranium under watch. Any unexplained deviation in the stocks will be immediately detected. We have years before we even have an actual reason to start worrying.

In my opinion, the only reason Iran didn't have nuclear weapons years ago is because Khamenei doesn't want them, plain and simple.

[osan]

Lets see... ex-ISRAELI intelligence making case against Iran.

No possible conflict of interest there at all.

I trust this implicitly.

Yup.

Sure do.

Uh huh...

[osan]

Even if Iran has "the bomb", how would they deliver it? Are they going to have UPS knock on the door and hand us the package?

The Soviet Union and China had/have "the bomb" and for some mysterious reason, they never decided to use it.

This is, of course, the $64 question. My 500K rounds of ammo are not worth much if I have no firearms.

If Iran gets "the bomb", we will know about it. Why? Because the only way they know whether they actually have a bomb and not something that merely looks like one is to test it. If they test it, we will know about it as soon as they do. Tests make large booms and seismic monitoring catches it as it happens.

Add to this the nearly certain fact that after testing they will then have no more bombs until they can make another, which probably takes time. No sense in making 10 untested bombs only to find the design fails to function as intended. That gives the world time to consider the news, assuming anyone should in fact be doing something about it, of which I am yet to be convinced.

Seems Iran has delivery to Israel. I do not live there, so I do not really care that much. I wish no harm to them, but at the end of the day the problems are theirs and they should deal with it and not us.

Iran is neighbor to China and Russia alike. Both have increasing trade ties with Iran. I seriously doubt Chinese and Russian leaders are secretly drooling at the prospect of Iran sending a nuclear warhead to Israel. Such a desire would make no sense in the context of sane human thought and as much as I may disagree with both those nations for manifold reasons I do not believe they are insane. Quite the opposite: I believe if anyone seeks such things it would be those behind the American throne. That aside, I doubt either China or Russia would look on such an act with any favor and would in fact take a dim view of it.

There are a large number of reasons not to wring hands over the Iran-has-a-bomb issue. That such wringing is being demonstrated by "government" is strongly suggestive that this whole deal is just theater in pursuit of the next agenda item in a seemingly endless parade of Hegelian dialectics lines up to move the pieces on the board this way and that. It is working fabulously well.

Woohoo.

[Aurave]

This is, of course, the $64 question. My 500K rounds of ammo are not worth much if I have no firearms.

If Iran gets "the bomb", we will know about it. Why? Because the only way they know whether they actually have a bomb and not something that merely looks like one is to test it. If they test it, we will know about it as soon as they do. Tests make large booms and seismic monitoring catches it as it happens.

Not entirely true, you don't HAVE to test a gun assembly type weapon. However you MUST test an implosion type weapon.

[pacelli]

Ok. This might be true. Perhaps Iran does have components to build a nuclear bomb. However, Iran does not have very many nuclear scientists with the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb.

I mean, how many of them have been killed in accidents?

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01...-iaea-of-role/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...onsored-murder

[osan]

Not entirely true, you don't HAVE to test a gun assembly type weapon. However you MUST test an implosion type weapon.

Any design will have to be tested if the goal is absolute reliability. If you want better than a 6-sigma assurance that the bomb will go bang when you tell it to, you absolutely must test it. There is no way around this. If Iran has actual plans of hitting ANYONE with a nuke, it becomes a matter of national survival - of the avoidance of virtually complete genocide of the race of Persia that the device works as intended the first time. This requires testing no matter if it is nothing more than a firecracker. Furthermore, pursuant to not being wiped from the roles of the living, Iran would have to have a very large arsenal of such weapons plus reliable intercontinental delivery systems for each an every one of them because the threat of a global thermonuclear conflagration is the ONLY threat that might keep the USA in check if Iran lets one loose. Things are so wholesale crazy these days even that could not be relied upon to guarantee the world would not go up in flames.

Gun-type designs are indeed far easier to realize, but I doubt Iran is down that path. It is a matter of returns on investment in such a game. Enriching uranium is a ball crushingly expensive proposition. If you are not familiar with the various processes, I can say that the costs in all terms are literally astronomical. If you are going to expend such resources to produce highly enriched uranium, you are most certainly going to want to get the most efficient use of it. If that use is a bomb then you are not going to settle for an inefficient design but rather at least a two-stage fission-fusion-fission device, or maybe even a third stage.

Another point that I've never seen made by the press is whether Iranians are breeding plutonium, which is very convenient in the first stage used to light off the fusion reaction. If they want a bomb then they must be breeding plutonium and if they were, why would the press not be all over it? We know about their gas centrifuge operations - why would we not know of breeder reactors? That knowledge could be played up big time to reinforce the argument that Iran really is after a bomb. The reason why plutonium would be desired is because it makes building a bomb a LOT easier. It reduces the U235 requirements by however many kilograms, which could represent years of refining time. If they are so all fired-up horny to nuke Israel or whomever, I see no reason they would not be producing plutonium by the ton. Were they doing this, I suspect they would not be able to keep it quite secret enough.

All this speculation aside, the fact remains that Iran is in no rational position to be threatening anyone with such weapons. They would have to dedicate several more decades before amassing an arsenal sufficient to pose a credible threat to anyone save perhaps Israel, which has weapons of its own and an immediate delivery capability. Let them settle the issue between themselves. I will add that even if they amassed 20K warheads it would not save them. The USA, for example, is geographically much larger and even we would have been wiped out in an exchange. Iran is tiny in comparison, making is a far easier target to saturate with ordnance.

This is all $#@! the various interested parties know better than we do. The strategic case for invading or otherwise attacking Iran is basically nonexistent except as a profoundly weak and black comedy. Keep an eye on them? OK, I suppose... but anything more is just more warmongering and profiteering... not to mention basis for the further destruction of our rights here at home under the false threat of terr'ism.

[guysenjem]

I could care less about the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel. I hope Iran has a nuke and they have every right to want to defend themselves against Israel and the Israeli-firsters who own our government and media. RP needs to separate himself from the other candidates by pointing out the incredible groveling the others do (including
Obama) to Israel all to secure the Jewish money. Come on RP be a staight shooter and tell the people what you most definitely know about who controls us.