Posted on 04/12/2006 5:03:46 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Iran could build a nuclear weapon within "days" once it completes plans to beef up its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, a State Department official said Wednesday.
"Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges," Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters in Moscow. "Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days."
Earlier on Wednesday, Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, appeared on Iran's state-run TV network to announce plans for "industrial scale" uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility, according to the Associated Press.
Rademaker, whose stunning "nukes-in-days" prediction was first reported by Bloomberg News, offered his comments in reaction to Saeedi's announcement.
Iran's first successful attempt to enrich uranium, announced Tuesday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was accomplished with just 164 centrifuges. While it's not clear how quickly Iran could reach the 50,000 centrifuge mark, there are indications that the rogue nation is already much closer than indicated by Tuesday's announcement.
Last August, an exiled Iranian dissident who helped uncover nearly two decades of covert nuclear activity in 2002, told the Associated Press that Iran has already manufactured thousands of centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade.
"4,000 centrifuge machines have not been declared to the IAEA," Alireza Jafarzadeh said. "And the regime has kept the production of these machines hidden from the inspectors while the negotiations with the European Union have been going on over the past 21 months."
In Feb. 2003, UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei visited Natanz. He reported that in a nearby building, workers were assembling parts for thousands of centrifuges.
The Natanz facility is buried 75 feet underground and has a reinforced concrete roof, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
..... darn!
I used to work for a professor of medicine (widely published guy, very smart, had a bibliography as long as your arm) who said that if psychiatrists were to examine a typical middle-eastern muslim man (whose identity was hidden from them), the mussulman would be diagnosed as totally nutzoid, off his rocker, quick-put-him-in-a-straightjacket insane.
And, I keep hearing they are in the 60,000 range for centrifuges ... that we know about. The surplus equipment available from the Russkis alone is scary.(Plenty scary to operate, too, I'd wager!) Not to mention the eminently buyable Paki-tech, CHICOM-tech, NoKo-Tech, displaced East German scientific-tech, and hundreds of tons of yellow cake from ... you guessed it ....Niger.
My guess, two years for home-boy production of weapons-grade uranium. Buying enough to build a couple of bombs? Probably already done. Enough dirty-bomb fixins to poison a city ... got it now.
Do not sell the Worthy Oriental Gentlemen short, Unc. We don't have that much breathing space here.
Taking everything with a grain of salt, I'd say I am coming down about half way between his outright alarmism and your (what I take to be) 5-year scenario.
Ouch! That leaves a mark.
So if we bomb Iran we can all come home and there'll never be another 9/11? Is that really your logic? You can't be serious? Have you ever read the Constitution? We were not meant to be a war monger nation!
LOL, so WWII was Hitler's Jew hunt. He bombed London in the hopes of hitting some Jews. He invaded the Sudetland hunting Jews. Do you realize how stupid your post is??
You're pathetic but funny in your own way.
So we bomb anyone else with Nukes? You still don't make any sense.
I responding to nonsense with more nonsense. There's alot of that on Freepers. Very little intelligence dwells here.
Comparing a preemptive strike against Iran's nuke facilities to Hitler's war of aggression against the rest of Europe makes you the nonsensical one.
Three Stooges sounds like a good medicine to watch.
This, whatever it is, passes each year. You have picked up, I suspect, the rumblings of what has all been hitting the news. 3/4ths of it is delusion. It's a grand delusion to make you feel so bad. Yes, there is good and evil. It's a sentence or headline spread around the world, like bad gossip, with the intent and purpose of depressing your spirit.
Hopefully you will watch that film, and recall, that not all is what it seems.
Whether Iran is going to nuke us or not. Iran only has everything to lose since its usual allies have been neutralized. What you are witnessing, IME, is the "pre-trial". Iran is handling it much as Saddam did. This doesn't necessarily mean war.
There are good people in Iran who wish to see a tyranny of evil stopped. Last I understood, the Mullahs hadn't been able to fully close ranks and shut out the light. And they were so sure no one was watching them -- that the entire focus had been on Saddam.
No matter what, btsea, Be of Good Cheer.
Thank you ........
There both wars of agression. Looks to me the nonsensical one is you.
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