What Threat Does Iran Pose? (VANITY)

Below is body of an email from a dear friend of ours and I offered to post it here to stir a discussion about what he wrote regarding the threat from Iran. The author, Gene, is a 67 year old American, retired from the US govt/military, and has been living in Belgium for the last 16 years with his lovely Belgian wife. As you'd imagine, he's constantly butting heads with Euros who are either sticking their heads in the sand or are outright sypathetic to the those who wish to harm our way of life. He wrote this email to those contacts and friends as a wake up call and I wanted to share it with my fellow Freepers.
-itslex71

The point here is this: As president of Iran, if I can produce some refined U-235, I believe I can package this in small quantities and find a way to transport it undetected to various strategic places around the world. It could be pre-positioned out of detection range and then if some country threatened me with a nuclear attack, I could direct a quick assembly and make a Hiroshima/Nagasaki type of demonstration that led instantly to the resignation of Japan from WWII. With this kind of block to Western nuclear threats in place, I can then proceed with my systematic terrorist activities as I wish, and in fact expand my operations far more aggressively.

I believe advanced missile delivery systems for terrorist nukes are unlikely. They would want to blow up cities with no warning and no trace of an incoming missile trajectory that identifies the sender. It is the ultimate manifestation of "the enemy within".

This is total BS .. that bomb was almost 4 tons and toon an entire B-29 to deliver it.

The Uranium fuel was 64 kilos...

The Mk I "Little Boy" was 10 feet (3 m) in length, 28 inches (71 cm) in diameter and weighed 8,900 lb (4000 kg). The design used the gun method to explosively force a sub-critical mass of uranium-235 and three U-235 target rings together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by simply shooting one piece of the uranium into the other by means of chemical explosives. It contained 64 kg U-235,

of which 0.7 kg underwent nuclear fission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_boy

In he context of Iran's fomenting what amounts to a classic Mass Movement, characterized by he propensity for self-sacrifice among it's members, the real strategy employed thus far in our war with Islamic Fascism has been to attempt to replace one Mass Movement with another, because, just as the most extreme and most ready for direct action are among recent converts, Mass Movements are interchangeable.

However, also characteristic of all Mass Movements, e.g. unifying hatred, the desire to destroy a present thought to be beyond repair, is a flight from Freedom, and the responsibility for the awesome knowledge of choosing between good and evil. (Not everyone wants freedom, as the President insists.) To replace the present Mass Movement with one whose ideology is Liberty, from which all members of classic Mass Movements seek release, has been an interesting, novel experiment.

The author correctly concludes time is running out on the dubious experiment, and precious time is being wasted for our last option to succeed.

We appear to have no choice but to declare that a state of war has existed with the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979, and rather than tank columns, and an invasion - or waiting for Iran to succeed in creating a capacity for exporting nuclear devices of every shape and size, we must demand that nation's unconditional surrender.

While I have sympathy for supporting regime change, and admit many Iranians (many in dark prisons) are admirers of the United States, the same could be said of Germany, up to the day Hitler took his own life with the fall of Berlin.

The scenario left to us is war, and the Mullah's surrender, using atomic weapons on their cities, one at a time, until an invasion becomes unnecessary and long before it becomes impossible.

Now is the time for this, and not after the Russians and Chinese are prepared to back up this Mad Mullah regime, and the wider world rationalizes it to be necessary to destroy the United States, and certainly long before a Civil War begins with the advent of a Fascist federal government.

We must face the face we are already at war, and we must win the war in the way we have always won war, using the terrible method of Total War, where there are no "noncombatants."

The alternative is defeat and retreat, and perhaps our own destruction in one of the way described, or on ways even more unthinkable.

As the original author of 1 above, I must apologize for my awkwardness while using this site for the first time. I will try to gather a few of your comments together here.

Before beginning, I want to express my greatest appreciation to itslex 71 for posting my writing and urging me to join Free Republic. Very good friends, indeed.

First: I'm sorry, gaijin, for the embarrassing mistake of writing Leon instead of Lyons. Thanks for correction.

Second: For Jet Jaguar, Adam Selene 235, and Centurion 2000--My source was as stated elsewhere in the document, "Scientific American" magazine, Feb. 2006, pg 38. Title: "Thwarting Nuclear Terrorism," by Glaser/von Hipple, both of Princeton University with extensive experience in other high level related jobs. I highly recommend you read it.

Third: For what it's worth, I have seen a copy of the "Little Boy", myself at the Los Alamos visitors museum, but this was a long time ago and rather irrelevant.

Fourth: Please don't get hung-up on the size of this bomb. That line of thinking takes us back to the standard scenario that everyone is bantering around, i.e. "it's too big for Iran to build and deliver, so let's not worry about it."

I was trying to point out that I believe it will be possible to transport a sufficient amount of U-235 in small quantities to any number of places and, if necessary, build a bomb in place with whatever machinery you want to talk about. That's the minor part.

The terrorists only need to demonstrate that they can explode a device whenever and where ever they want.

Remember the Cold War. Soviet Missiles were aimed at Western military installations; Western missiles were aimed at cities. Why? Because when the Soviet missiles were launched, it would be too late to take out their military bases. So the only DETERENT left was to threaten the cities. That was the Cold War stand-off, and the repeat is developing again as grey-whiskers has suggested in 20.

But is it? If we are in a swamp of alligators five/ten years from now (Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Somalia, Lebanon etc.), and a nuclear device goes off in say, Milano, which alligator are you going to decide just bit you in the pepete? ("You" being the Western Allies.) And how many more of those devices are set to go off and where?

This refinement of U-235 in Iran must be stopped, and quickly. I thank those that are recognizing the gravity of this situation, namely, se-ohio-young, Chena, Quix, okie 01, grey-whiskers, and Fitzcaralldo. I saved Prospero (26) out for a reason. I read this many times and became more impressed each time. What Prospero recommends for a solution is horrifying--similar to grey-whiskers--but the logic of Prospero's approach is almost refutable. We cannot allow ourselves to be maneuvered into a cold storage refrigerator, and suddenly find the door has been slammed shut.

Fifth: The point claudiustg makes about the UN is so important that I want to start another thread solely on this subject. The UN is okay for aid work, but a disaster for controlling conflicts. Most of us know this, but I hope to highlight some lesser know background.

Sixth: For aught-6, I'm very happy that you raised this point about the Europeans. You are right; there are many that are on our side starting with my Belgian wife whom I struggle with daily to moderate. I don't have the space here to detail all my positive experiences even though the negatives weigh heavily at times; but positives are there. Despite what you hear, America does have friends in the world.

Seventh: For gotribe, I'm sorry, but I don't feel qualified for speaking to your comment, so I will leave that task for others.

Again, MANY THANKS for everybody's interest.

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