Times

Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times. […] They said that, should Ayatollah Khamenei approve the building of a nuclear device, it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. The Iranian Defence Ministry has been running a covert nuclear research department for years, employing hundreds of scientists, researchers and metallurgists in a multibillion-dollar programme to develop nuclear technology alongside the civilian nuclear programme.

Citing unnamed “Western intelligence sources,” the UKran a scary headline yesterday about Iran’s nuclear program:

I smell another Judith Miller going on here. This kind of breathless reporting is all too familiar. A telling detail is the description of the bomb design Iran is supposed to have “perfected:”

Iran’s scientists have been trying to master a method of detonating a bomb known as the “multipoint initiation system” — wrapping highly enriched uranium in high explosives and then detonating it. […] The system operates by creating a series of explosive grooves on a metal hemisphere covering the uranium, which links explosives-filled holes opening onto a layer of high explosives enveloping the uranium. By detonating the explosives at either pole at the same time, the method ensures simultaneous impact around the sphere to achieve critical density.

I was a weird kid who studied thermonuclear weaponry as a hobby, and the description above resembles the design of the very first atomic bomb tested at Los Alamos in 1945. Iran’s rocket program just hasn’t got that kind of throw weight yet. Plus, they’re nowhere near to enriching enough uranium highly enough:

An Israeli official said that Iran had poured billions of dollars over three decades into a two-pronged “master plan” to build a nuclear bomb. He said that Iran had enriched 1,010kg of uranium to 3.9 per cent, which would be sufficient for 30kg of highly enriched uranium at 95 per cent. About 30kg is needed to build one bomb.

There’s also a world of difference between a thousand kilos of barely-enriched uranium and thirty kilos of highly-enriched uranium. The technical challenges of getting from one to the other are not simple.

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll repeat here: Iran’s demand to control the fuel cycle is actually quite consistent with Persian history and pride. Their pursuit of nuclear energy makes perfect sense when the price of oil is on the upside of $60 a barrel.

And what prompts this article? The timing seems odd. Israel has been ratcheting up the bellicose rhetoric lately while Iran has been caught up in a nascent Green Revolution. My gut tells me the unnamed “Western intelligence sources” are serving an agenda that isn’t official US policy.

This story has “PNAC fraud” written all over it.