"While Iran's low-enriched uranium is not quite weapons-grade, the Institute for Science and International Security, after reviewing the IAEA report, estimated that the further enrichment necessary could be done "within a few months."
That would give Iran a nuke right around Inauguration Day. "
Although the email provides no references, it seem to be quoting this report:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf
My response:
No references. Hear-say. Fear mongering. I smell FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. The standard means of manipulating the public into an action that benefits the authors).
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country" -- Hermann Goering, Hitlers Reich-Marshal at Nuremburg after WWII. (This is true: check snopes: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm )
As it happens, every country with about a square mile of dirt has “enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon”. That isn’t the question. The question is: do they have the technology to extract and purify the fissionable material from that dirt to the point that it would actually fission… err… go boom. And then, do they have a way of delivering that bomb to a target. What they have now is LEU or Low Enrichment Uranium. It’s good for nuke power plants, useless for A-Bombs. Moving it to weapons grade material is quite the trick.
These links are as close as I could find to the stuff they say in the email,
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf seems to be what this email is referencing at the end. And what they say IS scary. But who are “they”? I couldn’t find anything about their funding on their actual site, but I did find this:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Science_and_International_Security and for the most part, that funding looks pretty good. A lot of it does, however, have ties to the dreaded "Military Industrial Complex"... The people who scare us into paying them to build better weapons, and then into sacrificing our kids into using those weapons so they can get paid to build more.
http://www.isisnucleariran.org/nuclear-faq/ is a very informative document from the same I.S.I.S. outfit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran is an even better document that tells both sides of the history. Very much worth the read.
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml is the International Atomic Energy Agency but I couldn’t find any mention of 630 Kilograms of ANYTHING on their site:
http://www.iaea.org/googleResult.html?cx=004828748078731094376%3Am_jpm98tdns&cof=FORID%3A11&q=IRAN+%22630+kg%22+OR+%22630+kilograms%22+&sitesearch=IAEA.org#241
I did, eventually find a document at I.S.I.S. that says it is from the IAEA and quotes the 630 KG figure:
http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Iran_Report_11-19-08.pdf Note that just after that figure it says “All nuclear material at FEP, as well as all installed cascades, remain under Agency containment and surveillance.” So the IAEA is right there watching and holding on to that material. If Iran starts trying to turn it into weapons grade material, the IAEA will know.
And if we wanted to, our Tomahawks could easily hit the processing facility and remove that threat. In any case, and this is the important part, there is NO need for us to invade Iran as we did with Iraq. WE, and not they, have the technology for war at a distance. There is NO NEED for our boys to risk life and limb in Iran… other than to justify the increased funding of the Military industrial complex.
We own the air. We own space. We own the planet. There is NO NEED for us to set foot on every part of it. We have the aircraft carriers, the ICBM’s, the F117’s, the Patriots, and so on and so on. We already paid for all that. Asking us to pay with our children is monstrous.
In the end, the key point is that there is NOTHING wrong with Iran having nuke power and having LEU to run it. The fact that they now have enough LEU to make the weapons grade material for one bomb does not mean that they will. They don’t even have the equipment to do it, as far as I can tell. If they did pull all their LEU and put it into a new facility for making weapons grade material, we would know in advance and could easily stop it. Even if we didn’t stop it and they did make a bomb, there is no evidence that they would use it. Iran has never committed any terrorist act against US or our allies. The idea that they would hand over a bomb to a terrorist or allow a terrorist to steal it is… unlikely. If terrorists wanted a bomb, there are lots of other places to steal one; security in Russia isn’t exactly stellar right now. On one seems to be freaked out that Pakistan, another militant Islamic country, already has the A-Bomb. If we are going to invade Iran, why didn’t we invade Pakistan? They have more ties to terrorists than Iran ever has. And again, even if all the very worst is true. We can just blow up their enrichment facility. It isn’t like you can hide that sort of a plant…
We. Do. Not. Need. To. Invade. Iran.
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