Peace Like A River


It was a wide river, mistakable for a lake or even an ocean unless you'd been wading and knew its current. Somehow I'd crossed it... Now I saw the stream regrouped below, flowing on through what might've been vineyards, pastures, orhards... It flowed between and alongside the rivers of people; from here it was no more than a silver wire winding toward the city. - Leif Enger, Peace Like A River

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Spinning up

Iran has put another card on the table in this high stakes game over its nuclear program.

Iran has begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges at its pilot nuclear fuel enrichment facility at Natanz, an official close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday.

He said International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors had observed Iranian scientists putting UF6 gas into a "very small number" of centrifuges, machines that can turn uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors or, if enriched to high levels, atomic bombs.

The head of Iran's atomic program, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said the enrichment begun at Natanz was on a "small and laboratory scale," the ISNA students news agency reported soon after.

"Injecting gas into one or a few centrifuges could not be termed enrichment," he was quoted as saying.


If Iran is letting the IAEA see this operation, I would bet good money Iran isn't feeding UF6 into just a "very small number" of centrifuges. Surely there are centrifuges spinning away in some clandestine location.

And aside from Iran's enrichment program, nobody knows for sure how much nuclear material Iran has received from outside sources such as Pakistan and North Korea.

Iran is not in a cooperative mood. Iran is not genuinely trying to assuage the fears of the world community. By letting the IAEA see this, Iran is sending another message. The message is "Here's what we can do, we are enriching uranium, and surely you don't think we just let you see our entire operation."

Over at Winds of Change, Trent Telenko has analysis that is sobering if accurate.

We are now in a fast count-down to Iran’s first nuclear test. The only issues left are:

1) When it will take place, and
2) What kind of nuke will be used.

If Iran’s nuclear test happens this spring, the device will be a plutonium-fueled, implosion triggered, bomb of North Korean design and fissile material. If the test happens in the fall, there will probably be two devices - one each of each of Plutonium and Enriched Uranium. The plutonium bomb will be North Korean and the enriched uranium bomb will have a mix of Iranian fissionables and “world market pre-enriched” uranium feed stock. In either case the Iranian test sites will be infested with North Korean technicians – North Korea’s nukes will be tested in Iran to give China plausible deniability concerning its role in these matters.

Tom Holsinger, in his The Case for Invading Iran, and Rafi Eitan (former Israeli Intelligence chief) in a Jerusalem Post article, both contend Iran possesses operational nuclear devices today.
....
Tom Holsinger contended that Iran would delay its first nuclear tests until it had backfilled a complete nuclear weapons production line, from unprocessed uranium, to fissionables being cooked at every stage, and to finished weapons-grade fissionables being fabricated into weapons. But Iran doesn’t have to wait that long. It would be prudent to do so, but it doesn’t have to wait if it already has some working nuclear weapons made with North Korean materials and assistance.


At Threats Watch, Steve Schippert points out what should have been abundantly obvious to European diplomats all along.

News surfaces that Iran has also concurrently delayed talks on the Russian Proposal.

The moves coincide logically and serve as proof to the assertion that any suggestion by Iran in the past that they were interested in discussing the Russian Proposal (with or without Chinese participation) were disingenuous stalls for time. Iranian claims of interest in the proposal, as with other claims of interest in talks and negotiation, were nothing more than an attempts at delay and buying time, usually when it appeared the West was throwing its hands in the air intimating that it had done all it could do to resolve the situation through negotiation. Each time, Iran would suddenly make frustratingly well-received gestures that they were once again interested in a ‘peaceful resolution’.

Iran is effectively demonstrating today what it has insisted all along: That it will only accept enrichment on its own soil under its own control and that enrichment is seen as its right.


Steve also highlights what is currently known about Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Iranian indigenous nuclear fuel cycle begins at uranium mines in Yazd and Gachin, where the ore is also milled and converted to yellowcake. The yellowcake then needs to be converted from its yellow solid state into a more concentrated white solid form called UH6, or uranium hexafluoride. This is the primary purpose of the Isfahan nuclear facility. The UH6 is then taken to the enrichment facility (Natanz), where it is superheated and transformed into a gas state and fed into the centrifuges and further concentrated (enriched). Further enrichment (and separation) would eventually take place to create highly enriched uranium (weapons grade), and eventually this could include using Iran’s Arak heavy water plant. The plant is still under construction and Iran tried to keep it secret. The heavy water plant will be capable of not only producing highly enriched uranium, but also plutonium, from the otherwise ‘spent fuel’ byproduct of the enrichment process. This is the most important aspect of the Russian Proposal, which reports often under-emphasize, preferring to focus on the original UH6 enrichment rather than the return of the spent fuel.


When a threatening individual is moving at you rapidly with a knife, the wisest course of action is not to actually let him stab you to ascertain if the man intends to stab you.

The knife is in Iran's hand. Iran is moving towards possessing nuclear weapons. Are we truly prepared to let Iran gain nuclear weapons and then just hope Iran, the world's chief supporter of terrorism, really isn't as dangerous as it seems?

Tick, tick, tick...

3 Comments:

  • At Wed Feb 15, 02:12:00 PM, C-Low said…

    Picked this up at Rantburg the other night very interesting. 4supers within couple days sail + the common deployed set hmmm.

    http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1536306&C=america

    And right after the UN failure in March.

     
  • At Wed Feb 15, 02:35:00 PM, Jeff said…

    Interesting. You're right, nothing will happen until after the UN meeting, but at that point, it will be interesting to see what asests are where.

    The joint exercises may have something to do with this, too.

     
  • At Wed Feb 15, 08:03:00 PM, C-Low said…

    I don’t know maybe be innocent who knows.

    I do agree we are positioning ourselves to contain China if necessary. They are being very aggressive in pushing into Burma, Nepal, and the surrounding failed states. Getting around the Malkan straits dominated by the US and her long time allies I suspect.

    Personally I still think China is not going to try anything risking confrontation with US or India/Japan (which would drag US in). The reason simply natural resources and they are far from challenging our blue water domination to secure shipping lines even with ports in Pakistan & Burma to get those required resources in.

    I think China is going to go for the Stans (excuse of anti-terror) or Siberia after the Russian elections and Puty takes Russia back 100yrs or more. Russian gov will be weak with the people isolated from the west wide open to losing a scarcely populated area. That is a war China could win & win big playing to all their advantages. After the fact China would have the natural resources to play with the big boys.

    India, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and the US, is not a set China wants to jump on at least not yet with the US fleet holding the choker chain around the Chinese natural resource supply lines. Although a China with secure natural resources would maybe try such in the hope to win by attrition.

     

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