patrick.net

I have heard credible reports that Iran has none of those things and is the least dangerous country in the middle east.

A more likely candidate for "terror central" is Saudi Arabia.

This most likely is just more pot stirring by the defense contractors.

which "things"?

indigenous says

I have heard credible reports that Iran has none of those things and is the least dangerous country in the middle east.

SoftShell says

intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach not only Israel but also Europe.

SoftShell says

Iran is terror central.

And yellow cake uranium

how much faith do you have in integrity of http://www.usip.org/ ??

indigenous says

SoftShell says

intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach not only Israel but also Europe.

Don't know anything about them.

They apparently get their funding from congress which in my book makes them suspect.

My ideas comes from this guy,

I’m going to keep saying it until the American-Israeli threats against Iran stop. Reuters reports what everyone should know:

The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.

Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Indeed, this has obviously been true for years. The official position of practically every authority on this subject has been: Iran has no nukes and is not trying to get them. This “impending” threat from Iran is completely bogus. Yet we see the anti-Iranian rhetoric stepping up, month by month, all toward an increasingly likely culmination in the form of war. Insanity.

http://blog.independent.org/2012/03/23/there-is-no-iranian-nuclear-threat/

From your link, which is almost 3 years old:

TIME FRAME

The United States and Israel are on the same page in judging how long it would take Iran to have a nuclear weapon that could strike a target: about a year to produce a bomb and then another one to two years to put it on a missile.

So they've been spinning up shit for the past 3 years, working on the high explosives necessary to detonate,

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186003#.VMkzImjF98E

Isn't it about time you updated your data and reanalyzed?
you can't rely on 2012 data in 2015....

SoftShell says

Isn't it about time you updated your data and reanalyzed?

you can't rely on 2012 data in 2015....

Maybe, i will look further. But I'm skeptical of info coming from know pot stirrers.

Even the conservative icon Pat (Walking Dead) Buchanan sez:
"Iran has never tested a nuclear device. She has never produced weapons-grade uranium. Her Fordow underground plant now has IAEA inspectors and its 20-percent-enriched uranium is all being diluted. Construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak has been halted. Half of Iran’s centrifuges are not operating. There are International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras blanketing Iran’s program.

The U.S. intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb program. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the Director of National Intelligence."
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-persians-are-coming-15516

if no nuclear bomb program, why are they testing nuclear bridge wires?
why don't they open up parchin??

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186003#.VMlxj2jF98F

this looks like a 'true flag' to me...
we only get one shot at this, then the cats out of the bag and 2017 initiates End of Days...

In the wake of the reported massive explosion at Iran’s secret nuclear facility at Parchin on Sunday, it was reported by USAToday that Iran has admitted it had “tested ‘exploding bridge wires’” at Parchin, and “not neutron initiators.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/185790#.VMlymGjF98E

Reason enough to suspect anything coming from that direction...

Robert Sproul says

Even the conservative icon Pat (Walking Dead) Buchanan sez:

Given what President Giggle-and-Kill and his drooling Pavlovian zombie followers did to Iraq (for nothing), the Iranians would be insane not to build every weapon they possibly can.

Let's give Bush and his self-described Libertarian supporters a great big hand!

You still have that capability due to the military budget over the decades...
otherwise you would have been assimilated by now.

HydroCabron says

Let's give Bush and his self-described Libertarian supporters a great big hand!

The idea is not to allow them to get to that point.

Robert Sproul says

Even the conservative icon Pat (Walking Dead) Buchanan sez:

"Iran has never tested a nuclear device. She has never produced weapons-grade uranium.

SoftShell says

From your link, which is almost 3 years old:

TIME FRAME

The United States and Israel are on the same page in judging how long it would take Iran to have a nuclear weapon that could strike a target: about a year to produce a bomb and then another one to two years to put it on a missile.

So they've been spinning up shit for the past 3 years, working on the high explosives necessary to detonate,

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186003#.VMkzImjF98E

Isn't it about time you updated your data and reanalyzed?

you can't rely on 2012 data in 2015....

Since your own article talks about the bridge connectors testing that you are so worried about was in 2008 then isn't it about time you updated your data and reanalyzed.

This discussion is just dumb anyway. The only hold up in producing a nuclear weapon for any country is producing enough fissionable fuel. Everything else has been around forever, is well understood, and is no problem to produce. They were able to make the first fission bombs, which is what is used as the primary of an fusion bomb, in wwII with slide rules and standard milling machines. Turning an fission bomb into an fusion bomb just means adding a second stage with some lithium deuteride surrounded by lead or uranium to trap and direct the energy of the fist stage fission bomb explosion into fusing the deuterium and tritium which then makes a really big bang. Adding more uranium at the center of the fusion materials (called a spark plug) to create a secondary fission explosion ups the efficiency a lot. Pakistan sold nuclear tech to anybody and everybody for years. There is lots of it out there. Kahn who is quoted extensively in the article was pretty much the head of that. With an ally like pakistan, who needs enemies?

Christ, there was a grad student at princeton that designed a working nuke as his thesis in the 60's. He was able to do it using the publicly available information at the time. Designing and building a bomb just isn't hard. Producing enough uranium 235 or plutonium 239 to fill it with is the only hard part. Not technically hard, just hard because of the large amounts of material and time needed for a very small amount of fissionable fuel. If Iran wants to produce a bomb then there really is nothing the US can do to stop it short of invading no matter what the politicians say.

Yelllow cake! Aluminum tubes! Mobile weapons labs!

indigenous says

SoftShell says

Isn't it about time you updated your data and reanalyzed?


you can't rely on 2012 data in 2015....

Maybe, i will look further. But I'm skeptical of info coming from know pot stirrers.

I'm a thinking that this is just more pot stirring by the defense industry.

THE ROOTS OF IRAN’S NUCLEAR SECRECY
by Sheldon Richman
April 2, 2014
For years we’ve heard the steady drumbeat of news stories like this:

Over 18 years, Iran secretly assembled uranium enrichment and conversion facilities that could be used for a nuclear energy program or to construct an atomic bomb. [Washington Post, Nov. 16, 2004]

And this was among the least alarmist stories. The thrust of the sensational coverage, instigated by hawkish American politicians, has been that for almost two decades, beginning in the mid-1980s, Iran secretly enriched uranium in order to make a bomb.

What’s the real story? For that we have to turn to Gareth Porter’s definitive Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

In fact, Porter writes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in 2003 that during those 18 years, Iran had enriched uranium only briefly in 1999 and 2002. “Instead of referring to the brief few months of experiments testing centrifuges,” Porter writes, “news coverage of the [IAEA] report suggested that Iran had been continuing to enrich for nearly two decades.” The Bush administration was happy to encourage this false belief.

But truth be told, Iran did not tell the IAEA about everything. As a signer of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has obligations to notify the agency of certain activities. Porter acknowledges that Iran did not always keep the IAEA fully informed. Is this proof that Iran was preparing to make nuclear warheads? Porter provides overwhelming evidence that the answer is no. Moreover, some things, like the Natanz enrichment facility in Isfahan province, did not have to be disclosed at the point others revealed them. In the case of Natanz, no nuclear material was yet present.

What possible reason could Iran have had for working in secrecy? Simply put, from the 1980s onward the U.S. government was determined to thwart Iran’s efforts to build even modest a civilian nuclear program. Why? Iran was regarded as an enemy of America because its 1979 Islamic revolution had overthrown a loyal U.S. client, the repressive shah of Iran, whom the CIA had undemocratically restored to power a quarter century earlier.

In violation of the NPT, U.S. diplomats stopped other countries from supplying Iran. With no open channels from which to obtain what it needed for its nuclear program, Iran turned to covert channels.

Specifically, why did Iran keep Natanz under wraps? “Iran’s secrecy about Natanz,” Porter writes,

was linked to both the continued US political-diplomatic interventions to prevent Iran from having an independent enrichment capability and the initial threats Israel had made, in the late 1990s, to use military force against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran’s decision-makers were clearly calculating that notifying the IAEA about the Natanz facility would trigger hostile responses by the United States and/or Israel that would put the successful opening and operation of the facility at risk.

Iran’s fear of attack was not paranoia. In 1981 Israel had attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, which was “explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs,” according to Harvard University physicist Richard Wilson, who inspected the reactor after the attack. (Emphasis added.) Porter adds, “Israeli officials circulated rumors through diplomatic channels and planted stories in the news media of plans for a strike against [Iranian] nuclear targets.”

But, Porter comments, “The Natanz facility was too big, and located too close to a main highway, to remain covert.” This is not consistent with nefarious intentions. Besides, U.S. satellites were watching, and the Iranians knew it.

Similarly, Iran strove to keep uranium and equipment purchases from China and others secret: “Each of the previously unreported nuclear experiments that Iran finally declared to the IAEA in 2003 involved supplies of nuclear technology or material, or both, that Iran knew would come under heavy US political-diplomatic pressure if the suppliers’ role were to be discovered by the United States.”

Yet, even with Iran’s concealment, the IAEA concluded in 2003, “To date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme.”

Comments Porter, “But the Bush administration ridiculed that conclusion, and news media coverage tended to support its skepticism.”

However, in 2007 the U.S. intelligence community declared that whatever weapons research the Iranians might have been engaged in had ceased four years earlier.

http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-roots-of-irans-nuclear-secrecy/

and this that the article was about:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1935982338/futuoffreefou-20

what's wrong with you people?
don't you want to stay employed?

I believe three "l"'s indicate 90% enrichment achieved.
Thanks for supporting me!

HydroCabron says

Yelllow cake!

Well if the neocons are wrong and youall are right, we are all still fucked as iran has had the wire ignition thingys since 2008, can spin up some potent shit in under 6 months while simple denying us access under false pretenses knowing we won't do jack about it other than sanction hummus imports, can deliver the package ( albeit not accurately ) to europe, soon to the north american continent... funds hezbollah and some other crazies, openly declares their intent to destroy another country...a nuclear middle east seems inevitable...hair triggers all around...something/somebody's gonna fuck up under those circumstances...and things are going to go kaboom.

Warmonger!

Realist.

Quigley says

Warmonger!

somebodies gotta step up to the plate before the sand barrons all get nukes...
if that happens it won't be pretty...
remember those shipping containers that are ever so easy to move weapons into our ports?

Quigley says

Warmonger!

christianity...islam...they all preach a happy ending via rapture or virgins and encourage you to accelerate the timeline.
and you wanna sit back and let these freaks arm themselves with nukes?

SoftShell says

Well if the neocons are wrong and youall are right, we are all still fucked as iran has had the wire ignition thingys since 2008, can spin up some potent shit in under 6 months while simple denying us access under false pretenses

Spin up some potent shit? What potent shit is that? It's like being pregnant. Either you have the fissionable materials or you don't. You don't "spin up" weapons grade material in 6 months.

SoftShell says

christianity...islam...they all preach a happy ending via rapture or virgins and encourage you to accelerate the timeline.

and you wanna sit back and let these freaks arm themselves with nukes?

The only way to stop it is to invade. Iran is 10 times the size and 10 times the population of Iraq. What is your plan?

circa 9/14....

if Iran employed all of its installed IR-1 centrifuges—roughly 10,200—
and used its stockpile of nearly 7,800 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride as feedstock, it would be able to produce 25 kilograms of weaponsgrade uranium hexafluoride in two to three months,

https://www.armscontrol.org/files/Iran_Brief_Breaking_Down_Irans_Breakout_Capacity.pdf

bob2356 says

You don't "spin up" weapons grade material in 6 months.

no need to invade...
advanced bunker busters take out the known nuclear sites. give them 8 hours notice to remove the people from the blast area.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324582004578459170138890756

It's quick and effective with no planned loss of life unless they want to put some civilians in harms way to try to deter the strike, then that's too bad.

Yes, they probably have other undetected sites, but this would set them back at least a decade...

bob2356 says

The only way to stop it is to invade. Iran is 10 times the size and 10 times the population of Iraq. What is your plan?

if the bunker busters are ineffective, use small yield nukes to make the sites uninhabitable.

why would you play cards with a known repetitive cheater, knowing they will cheat and you will pay the price...?

lucky for us, christian countries were affected by the enlightenment prior to becoming nuclear capable.
Islam has yet to reach this stage...

SoftShell says

christianity...islam...they all preach a happy ending via rapture or virgins and encourage you to accelerate the timeline.

and you wanna sit back and let these freaks arm themselves with nukes?

SoftShell says

circa 9/14....

if Iran employed all of its installed IR-1 centrifuges—roughly 10,200—

and used its stockpile of nearly 7,800 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride as feedstock, it would be able to produce 25 kilograms of weaponsgrade uranium hexafluoride in two to three months,

https://www.armscontrol.org/files/Iran_Brief_Breaking_Down_Irans_Breakout_Capacity.pdf

bob2356 says

You don't "spin up" weapons grade material in 6 months.

Perfect, thanks for making my point. If a country has the technology and materials then they have it, if they don't then they don't. Technical issues aren't stopping Iran. You 6 months concern is meaningless.

So what are you prepared to do about it?
I gave you the quick easy cheap solution..
or are you ready to let history repeat via Neville et al?

even the libby king sees the danger and is prepared to go directly against the principles he ran on and RAISE THE DEFENSE BUDGET 8%...

SoftShell says

no need to invade...

advanced bunker busters take out the known nuclear sites. give them 8 hours notice to remove the people from the blast area.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324582004578459170138890756

It's quick and effective with no planned loss of life unless they want to put some civilians in harms way to try to deter the strike, then that's too bad.

Yes, they probably have other undetected sites, but this would set them back at least a decade...

bob2356 says

The only way to stop it is to invade. Iran is 10 times the size and 10 times the population of Iraq. What is your plan?

LOL. If Iran wants to build a nuke, they might I really don't know and neither do you, then it can easily be done in secret. It's a huge country and they aren't stupid. Orbital mechanics are fixed so they know the satellite coverage and we don't do overflights. Since you, or anyone else, have no idea how much nuclear work might be secreted away if they were seriously pursuing a nuclear bomb then how could you possibly know it will set them back a year? Then what happens next year? Especially since you have pointed out they can have fuel in 2 months. Contradict yourself much?

Your (and the wsj) childlike neocon faith in military operations working perfectly flies in the face of 10000 years of real world experience in what military people call FUBAR and TARFU. Let no man say you are a quick learner.

Maybe if you weren't so wrapped up in your john wayne/rambo mode you might do some critical thinking about why the US has spent so much time and money pushing the idea of the iranian boogeyman onto it's population and the rest of the world. Hint, saudi arabia is sunni, iran is shia. Hint #2 saudi arabia wants to control the middle east, iran wants to control the middle east. Hint #3 saudi arabia leads the us around by the nose while financing 90% of the terrorism against the us with the money they get from the us. follow the money jerry mcguire.

SoftShell says

So what are you prepared to do about it?

I gave you the quick easy cheap solution..

or are you ready to let history repeat via Neville et al?

Prepared to do? The situation is so fucked up at this point that it's not going to end well no matter what. There are too many drum beaters like you in power. What we should have done a long time ago, like when reagan was elected, was to open up to iran and repair the damage done with carter's mishandling of the situation. After 35 years of demonizing iran things probably aren't going to improve. Plus our saudi masters would freak about any kind of honest open dialog with iran.

A quick easy solution to what? By your own pull it out of your ass estimate bombing will "set them back a year". Gee a whole year. Really piss off the Iranians and they close the straits of hormuz and instantly crash the us economy. You do remember the us still imports over a million barrels a day through there don't you? Picture oil at 500 a barrel.

History repeat as neville? The iranians are planning on conquering europe, north africa, and russia? That's new news. Maybe. They tried it before though 550-330 BC. They didn't get past thrace (now bulgaria, greece, and western turkey), but they did get as far as libya and georgia.

Lol...so to you a year is like a decade...what are you, a methhead??

SoftShell says

Yes, they probably have other undetected sites, but this would set them back at least a decade...