PrintAugust 31, 2009
Iran's Bomb: A Done Deal?
Iran's nuclear weapons development is a done deal, according to a TV interview with a retired high Egyptian official at the UN nuclear agency, the IAEA. They can make a bomb whenever they want to. Once they make the decision to enrich uranium it could take one or two years, as they choose.
As shown by MEMRI TV, coming from Egypt's Channel 1:
Yousri Abu Shadi: "The question should be whether it (Iran) is capable of doing this (making a nuclear bomb). Yes. Technically speaking, it is capable of it. If Iran wants to produce nuclear bombs within a short period of time, it can. It's over.They have been enriching uranium for two years now, and by now they have more than 7,000 centrifuges, which produce tons of enriched uranium, but to a low percentage. If they complete the process, they will produce uranium enriched to whatever percentage they want - 90% or more. At the moment, they enrich uranium to 5%. We must admit that Iran is..."Interviewer: "How long does it take to move from 5% to 90%?"Yousri Abu Shadi: "It doesn't take a long time."Interviewer: "What, a year? Two years?"Yousri Abu Shadi: "I say that since they have not completed the plant yet, and they are still working on it, it will take them two years maybe, but if Iran withdraws from the inspection, it will be able to produce a nuclear bomb in less than two years."
Coincidentally, Dr. Uzi Rubin has an online presentation at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on "Iran's Missiles: Current and Future Implications for Europe." Rubin believes that Iran's missile development is moving much faster than anticipated. Rubin argues that Iran will not attack the United States directly. Instead, it is methodically expanding its sphere of armed power over the region -- where the United States Navy and Air Force have been able to move freely for the last sixty years. Until now. That will change everything.
Iran's missiles can now reach Europe. They are 50 miles from Saudi Arabia. Tehran will therefore be able to threaten the biggest oil spigot for the industrialized world, just by building more and more missiles and bombs.
Writes Dr. Rubin,
"What does Iran invest in? Precision strike munitions, anti-ship missiles, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and space capabilities. The newer Shahab 3ER missile (based on the North Korean No Dong), with a reach of 2,000 km, can threaten Ankara or Alexandria, giving Iran leverage over the entire Middle East."Iran has acquired eighteen BM25 land-mobile missiles with launchers from North Korea, which can strike targets in Europe. In the past, the BM25 has been produced in two models: one with a range of 2,500 km and the second with a range of 3,500 km.
"... In 1998 Iran announced a space program. A space launcher that can orbit a satellite weighing 300 kg can be altered into an ICBM that could drop more than 300 kg on Washington."Iran's political leadership is now aiming toward global power projection in the name of Islam, demanding recognition that Islam comprises 25 percent of humanity and should occupy its rightful place in decision-making in world affairs. Statements like this are not about self-defense."
Tehran has just signed a mutual military aid pact with the Gulf sheikhdom of Qatar. When Sunni Arabs start to sign aid agreements with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran you can see the balance of power shifting in most the radical direction. Under Tehran's power the Sunni Arabs could be forced to unite into a unified radical Muslim caliphate. That would put much of the Muslim world under one rule.
Sunnis privately think Shiites are not real Muslims, and vice versa. But they have to be realistic in the face of a martyrdom cult with nuclear weapons. If Tehran becomes a nuclear power, everybody will kowtow to them, as surely as Barack Hussein Obama bowed down to King Abdullah of Saudi.
The Left has witch-hunted the Bush administration for so long that they can no longer even imagine what an A'jad Bomb would do to our domestic politics. But it was Stalin's Bomb that scared the daylights out of Americans in the 1950s. A huge wave of anti-Communism followed, when ordinary Americans realized that after all the anxiety and lost loved ones in World War Two, this unimaginable nuclear technology could destroy civilization -- and that it was in the hands of a known mass murderer like Jozef Stalin.
Asit turned out, of course, Stalin's nuke technology was stolen by Klaus Fuchs and other Communists involved in the Manhattan Project. American fear about Communist infiltration was not unrealistic. The White House and the Manhattan Project were just two of the places that were heavily infiltrated. What resulted was a wave of anti-Communism, some of it exaggerated, but basically quite realistic. Americans saw the Soviet Union as a threat to our survival.
This Iranian regime is comparable to Stalin's Soviet Union. The Khomeini regime was quite ready to lose hundreds of thousands of martyrs in the Iran-Iraq War. The same thug regime has just shown the world that it is ready to kill, torture and rape its own people simply for having peaceful demonstrations.
Before 2012 we may see an Iranian bomb. How will Americans react? How will the Middle East, Israel, and Europe react? Chances are that the Europeans and Arabs will just kowtow to Tehran. Israel will either fight, or build a huge defensive infrastructure for the entire country, including large-scale anti-missile defenses. Or more likely, both.
And America? Under Obama as president there's no telling. This White House makes Jimmy Carter look tough. The radical Left is now in power for the first time in American history, and it is desperately grasping more and more control. They are in an amazing hurry. But the Left doesn't even have any rational ideas about the Iranian nuclear race. It just slips out of their minds. They have been in denial so long, they will not be able to mount even the appearance of a rational defense when Tehran gets the bombs. In any case, Americans just won't believe Barack Obama if he tries to talk tough. You can't have it both ways.
If Obama visibly fails to defend the United States against a nuclear Iran, our domestic politics may simply flip 180 degrees in 2012. It's happened before, when Ayatollah Khomeini demonstrated Jimmy Carter's helplessness in the face of an infinitely smaller threat. So far, Obama has only cut our anti-missile defenses by 1.2 billion dollars, even as the danger is rising. If Obama's domestic fantasies become law, we may not have the tax base to mount a realistic missile defense.
Britain just freed the Libyan terrorist who blew up flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. Rumor has it that Gordon Brown traded him for an oil agreement with Libya. But the nuclear arms race had to be part of Brown's calculations. In public the Europeans deny any connection. In private, they know where the power is shifting, and they are quietly making arrangements. That's how they operate.
If push comes to shove with Iran, the United States will only have itself to depend on, and a few allies. We can retreat from the Middle East like Europe has. But then we have to live with the consequences. The only thing worse than being the world cop is to be the defeated world cop.
