| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| US intel sez Iran still years from the bomb |
| 2006-04-14 |
| Iran remains years away from obtaining the materials and technology necessary for a nuclear weapon despite its announcement this week that it has begun enriching uranium, several top U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday. Kenneth Brill, the head of the newly created National Counterproliferation Center, said the U.S. assessment on the timeframe of Iran's weapons development was sufficiently broad that it does not need to be modified. Senior intelligence officials alternatively say Tehran will have a nuclear weapon within a decade, or within several years. "What the Iranians have announced, is what they've announced," said Brill, speaking alongside nine senior intelligence officials at a discussion of the Office of the National Intelligence Director's first year. "They need to let the (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors in there to see it, because they have obligations." He noted that the regime has blustered before about developments that did not readily materialize. "We really have to see what's happened in Iran," Brill said. "There is still a very significant amount of time that needs to be worked through by the Iranians to get to where they want to go." Defending the quality of intelligence assessments, Brill said much of what the intelligence agencies have predicted has been validated by the IAEA and others. U.S. intelligence officials are scrubbing their information and analysis on Iran as tensions increase over its nuclear program. Tehran insists its work is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes, but the U.S. and a number of its allies believe it is after a nuclear arsenal. The nation's No. 2 intelligence official, Gen. Michael Hayden, said the Iran intelligence has benefited from the lessons-learned exercises on estimates about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Based on all the data available to spy agencies, he said confidently that Iran is intent on developing a nuclear weapon. Over time, he added, "We are able to be more clear." He declined to offer specifics about the information — or the gaps in information. The top U.S. intelligence analyst, Thomas Fingar, said changes have been made in how analysis is done. "All of us have greater confidence in the judgments that we are making and bringing forward on Iran," Fingar said. He said the various intelligence agencies took to heart the various reports on the flawed intelligence leading up to Iraq. "We get it," Fingar said. "We realize we have got to rebuild confidence." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #15 Its only Uranium, NOT Plutonium, ergo NO WMDS IN IRAN = NO WMDS IN NORTH KOREA, etal. Unreliable, defective, dishonest, MOther Hillary/Cindy-less Fascist=HalfCommunist SOCIALIST AMERIKA made, or will soon make, yet another l'serieuse international mistake ergo SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH, SOcialist AMerika must surrender and submit to full-fledged, Holocaust-centric, Motherly Communism and OWG in order to save our imperfect, anti-Utopian Male Brute souls. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-04-14 21:55 |
| #14 I don't know about that. Have you tried to translate Chinese? Already done for them. Thank AQ Khan. |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 21:26 |
| #13 All the hard stuff is already done for them... I don't know about that. Have you tried to translate Chinese? |
| Posted by: ed 2006-04-14 20:46 |
| #12 The Chinese nukes are "batteries not included". |
| Posted by: Master of Obvious 2006-04-14 20:42 |
| #11 Haven't had enough coffee for the day. Just realized you were being sarcastic... |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 12:34 |
| #10 decades ?? It is confirmed that Iran got a copy of the Chinese implosion bomb design from AQ Khan There are associated detailed notes giving advice on machining parts etc. All the hard stuff is already done for them... |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 12:27 |
| #9 To he|| with "years". How about "decades" or "centuries"? |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-04-14 11:54 |
| #8 Sarabhai was a follower of Mohandas Gandhi and a pacifist who opposed nuclear arms. His selection was probably politically motivated as Sarabhai hailed from a rich and politically powerful family. At the beginning of June 1966 Sarabhai ordered a halt to SNEPP, and the confiscation of the papers that had been generated on the project. It appears that this was Sarabhai's personal decision, rather than a reflection of PM Gandhi's policies at this time, and he may not have even consulted with her on it. The bomb makers recovered from Sarabhai's attempt to shut down the bomb project (who BTW was the father of India's rocket program) and it took them five years to produce a working design. They actually tested two years later (after getting approval from Indira Gandhi). 5 years - starting from scratch. Iran doesn't have to do the physics or most of the engineering - they already have a proven design. An this is not the 1960s - computers are vastly more powerful now and mathematical simulation techniques far more advanced. Question is - are there other centrifge cascades in operation? How fast are they accumulating HEU? |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 10:54 |
| #7 Note that Iran doesn't have to do ANY of this. It already has detailed blueprints of the (tested) chinese U235 implosion bomb, suitable for a missile warhead, provided by the AQ Khan network. The blueprint copies from Libya had detailed notes on the fabrication of various parts of the weapon. From http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaFirstBomb.html Late in 1967 the scientific leadership at BARC led by Homi Sethna and Raja Ramanna undertook a new effort to develop nuclear explosives, one that was larger and more intense than any previous efforts. One that would lead to the successful design of a nuclear device, a device that India would successfully test. It is not completely clear why they decided to revive the effort and move forward at that time, but due to the convergence of a number of trends perhaps the time simply seemed ripe. China had just exploded a thermonuclear device in 1967, and had become very belligerent - moving troops into disputed areas and making threats. And India's supply of separated plutonium, necessary for anything beyond purely theoretical work, was slowly accumulating. Some researchers (like Perkovich) have concluded that the new effort was begun at the initiative of the scientists involved. Chengappa however states that Gandhi directly approved the new effort at the urging of her new secretary Parmeshwar Narain Haksar [Chengappa 2000, pg. 112], and that she specifically told Vikram Sarabhai, chairman of the IAEC, not to interfere. In any case Sarabhai did not try to stop this work when he became aware of it and appears by the spring of 1969 to have become at least a moderate supporter of the program. That fall Rajagopala Chidambaram - then a researcher in molecular biology at BARC - was recruited by Raja Ramanna to investigate the equation of state of plutonium (how its density varies with temperature and pressure) - knowledge essential for designing an implosion bomb. Chidambaram would later become the chairman of the IAEC, and head of India's nuclear weapons program leading up to the 1998 test series. Other key researcher's who became involved in the project in 1967-68 include P.K. Iyengar, Ramanna's deputy, and Satinder Kumar Sikka, who would lead the development of India's hydrogen bomb in the 90s. The team would eventually grow to between fifty and seventy five scientists. 1970 saw expansion of the nuclear weapons program in many ways. Due to the requirements of Purnima the program needed to develop facilities and experience in handling large amounts of plutonium (developed under the supervision of P.R. Roy), and work also began on fabricating plutonium metal alloys for the eventual construction of the bomb core. To advance the development of the essential implosion system V.S. Ramamurthy also began performing numerical implosion simulations on an antiquated Soviet Besm 6 computer Development of the technology for implosion got underway in April 1970 when Ramanna sent Pranab Rebatiranjan Dastidar, the electronics expert at BARC, to Waman Dattatreya Patwardhan at the Explosive Research and Development laboratory (ERDL) at Pune to begin work on the detonation system for the bomb. Patwardhan was well known to the BARC scientists, since he helped them with the explosives tests years before as part of SNEPP. In July nuclear physicist Dr. Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri took over as science adviser to the Defense Minister, and as Director of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The following month, he and Ramanna began working together to recruit the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), located in Chandigarh, to develop the explosive lenses for the implosion system. During 1971 work on weapon design continued. Srinivasan working with K. Subba Rao developed models of the fission process on a nuclear bomb, and equations to predict its efficiency. Chidamabaram completed his work on the plutonium equation of state, and Ramamurthy developed computational models of the implosion, nuclear reaction, and disassembly process to predict the devices behavior. Throughout this period Ramanna and his lieutenant, P.K. Iyengar, held frequest reviews of the projects progress. By the beginning of 1972 the basic design for India's first nuclear device was complete, and other parts of the program for developing the necessary expertise to implement the design were coming along. During that year the data from operating Purnima (starting in May) began flowing in allowing confirmation and refinement of the device's nuclear design; and the work in plutonium metallurgy reached the point where the device could be successfully fabricated. |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 10:14 |
| #6 One problem... they got a bad track record with this sort of stuff... October 24, 1964 - CIA document - "while India has the capability to develop an atomic bomb, the present government does not plan to do so". U.S. Intelligence and the Indian Bomb On May 18, 1974 to the surprise of the U.S. Intelligence Community, India conducted an underground nuclear test at a site in the desert at Pokhran - making it the world's seventh nuclear power and the sixth to test |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-14 09:51 |
| #5 I wonder whether Iran has not been attempting to draw the U.S.'s fire, trying to encourage a strike that, even if successful, will show a nuclear program only in relative infancy. The result could be to innoculate the regime against steps that might be taken in the future. My guess is that (1) Iran is making slow progress toward going nuclear; and that (2) the Bush administration has no intention of doing much about it because if Iran gets nukes and doesn't use them, we don't much care, and if they do use them, we don't have to pussyfoot around how to respond. For those who wonder whether it makes sense to wait until we (or someone else) gets nuked in order to respond, I cannot say, but I believe that this is current U.S. policy. Speak loudly, offer no carrots, but threaten no sticks. |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2006-04-14 09:26 |
| #4 Yep, Anon the same one who didn't see that collapse comin', but that old-west Cowboy of a President did, lol! We miss you, Ronnie! |
| Posted by: BA 2006-04-14 09:07 |
| #3 Is it the same CIA that did not forsee the forthcoming collapse of the USSR? |
| Posted by: Anonymous7448 2006-04-14 08:38 |
| #2 I s that the same intelligence community that CIA compromised its own intel assets in Iran? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-04-14 08:26 |
| #1 "We realize we have got to rebuild confidence." Yup and all of that confidence building activity will go down the drain the moment the Iranians explode a nuke somewhere. |
| Posted by: Valentine 2006-04-14 04:52 |