On April 12,
Bloomberg News "reported" that:
Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to
halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear
bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.
Iran will move to "industrial scale'' uranium enrichment
involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the
Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi
as telling state-run television today.
"Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough
highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,''
Stephen Rademaker, U.S. assistant secretary of state for
international security and nonproliferation, told reporters
today in Moscow.
Well, the Security Council made no such demand, and the
"sense" of what neo-crazy Rademaker said has deliberately been
misrepresented to you.
Rademaker did not say that Iran would be "capable" of
"making" a nuclear bomb within 16 days after installing and
getting to operate satisfactorily uranium-enrichment cascades,
involving more than 50,000 gas-centrifuges.
The "sense" of what Rademaker said is that when and if the
Iranians have manufactured an additional 50,000 or so
gas-centrifuges, installed them in cascades in the underground
"bunker" at Natanz, and gotten the cascades to operate
satisfactorily – all done under the watchful sensors of
inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Safeguards and
Physical Security regime – they could then withdraw from
the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, could
then throw out the IAEA, could then perhaps
reconfigure their gas-centrifuge cascades so as to produce
several hundred pounds of bomb-grade [almost pure U-235]
enriched uranium, rather than the tons of reactor-grade
enriched-uranium the cascades were designed, built and operated
to produce
It takes about 120 pounds to make a simple gun-type nuke like
the one we dropped on Hiroshima. It takes maybe 40 or 50 pounds
of bomb-grade enriched uranium to make an implosion-type nuke.
Of course, virtually every implosion-type nuke that has ever
been made – including the one we dropped on Nagasaki – used
almost pure Pu-239, not almost pure U-235. (It is not possible
to make a simple gun-type nuke with Plutonium."
Furthermore, making an implosion nuke is not easy. If it
were, then there would be no doubt whatsoever that North Korea,
or DPRK, now has a dozen or so Pu-239 implosion-type nukes. And
if they do, it is President Bush's fault.
When Bush became president, all DPRK nuclear materials,
reactors and associated facilities were "frozen" under IAEA lock
and key, subject to the US-IAEA-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994.
But, shortly after the White House Iraq Group was set up to
manage the Operation Iraqi Freedom pre-war propaganda campaign,
Bush unilaterally abrogated the Agreed Framework.
The Koreans responded by withdrawing from the NPT – which
made the DPRK-IAEA Safeguards Agreement null and void –
restarting their weapons-grade plutonium-producing reactor and
chemically separating out the weapons-grade plutonium they had
already produced.
By neo-crazy logic, the North Koreans now have at least a
dozen plutonium implosion-type nukes. And if they do, it is
without any question Bush's "bad."
Bush claimed he abrogated the Agreed Framework because he had
"intelligence" that the Koreans has a secret nuke-oriented
uranium-enrichment program, unknown and undetected by the IAEA.
No evidence has ever been found for such a program.
You may recall that the principal rationale Bush gave for
launching a pre-emptive war – neither authorized by Congress or
sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council – against Iraq in 2003
was that he had "intelligence" that the Iraqis had a secret
nuke-oriented uranium-enrichment program, unknown and undetected
by the IAEA.
No evidence has ever been found for such a program.
Now comes Seymour Hersh's stunning article,
"The Iran Plans" in the New Yorker magazine – plus
interviews of Hersh on Wolf Blitzer's Show and
by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now – about Bush plans to pre-emptively
"take out" the Iranian secret nuke-oriented uranium-enrichment
program, unknown and undetected by the IAEA.
According to Hersh, one of the options that the White House
adamantly refuses to take "off the table" – despite the pleading
of Pentagon military planners and our allies – is the use of
bunker-busting nukes.
It seems military planners told the White House that if they
wanted to be sure to destroy the underground uranium-enrichment
bunker at Natanz – which is to eventually hold those 50,000
gas-centrifuges, but is now empty – they'd have to nuke
it.
According to Hersh, plans to destroy all Iranian nuclear
facilities, combat aircraft, anti-aircraft batteries and
command-control centers are in the early stages of
implementation.
No one in the Bush-Cheney administration is denying that.
Even the option to nuke an empty bunker.
