The Skinny on the Iranian Nuke

Before we begin, let's get one thing straight. Nuclear weapons are bad. Increasing the number of nations that possess nuclear weapons from the traditional six members of the club -- The U.S., Russia, England, France, China and Israel -- is worse. The idea of the Indians possessing The Bomb gives me the heeby-jeebies and I just don't like to think at all about Pakistan. Therefore, the Iranian Bomb is Bad, mmkay?

But, before we all rush off into whatever preemptive adventure our Dear Leader has in his peanut of a brain -- and mind you, if it were the case that Iran was about to produce an actual, functioning nuke I'd fly the B-2 myself -- let us clear something up. There is no urgency to act!

We have years to figure this out. So, as soon as some nut job tries to tell you that the Iranians are "just months away" from The Bomb and fear -monger us into not waiting until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud, just point them over to where some actual nuclear weapons experts have done some actual math (PDF file) with some actual intelligence to come up with a worst case scenario of: THREE YEARS.

The nut graphs of this three part series at Arms Control Wonk:

Albright and Hinderstein have created a notional timeline for such a program:

• Assemble 1,300-1,600 centrifuges. Assuming Iran starts assembling centrifuges at a rate of 70-100/month, Iran will have enough centrifuges in 6-9 months.


• Combine centrifuges into cascades, install control equipment, building feed and withdrawal systems, and test the Fuel Enrichment Plant. 1 year


• Enrich enough HEU for a nuclear weapon. 1 year


• Weaponize the HEU. A 'few' months.

Total time to the bomb—about three years.

This result reflects a worst case assessment, and thus is highly uncertain. Though some analysts at the IAEA believe that Iran could assemble centrifuges quicker, other analysts, including those in the US intelligence community, appear to believe that a date of 2009 would be overly optimistic. They believe that Iran is likely to encounter technical difficulties that would significantly delay bringing a centrifuge plant into operation. Factors causing delay include Iran having trouble making so many centrifuges in that time period or it taking longer than expected to overcome difficulties in operating the cascades or building a centrifuge plant.

So remember the lesson from Iraq folks; Invade in haste, repent at leisure.

Have a great weekend.