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They are still in the very early phase of engineering and actually assembling a sufficiently large enough series cascade gas centrifuge system capable of producing sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium, where I am talking about a percentage in the high eightees or low nineties which would provide them with what we call weapon grade uranium.

Therefore, they either have gotten very small amounts of plutonium form say NK, China, Russia, or Pakistan for experimenting with, e.g. nuclear hot lab processes for instance, or they have accquire the stuff via. some other means.

Your "argument" is filled with two MAJOR assumptions, and you know what happens when you ASS-U-ME right?

One, you take at face value what they say the capabilities are... that is what we know for fact and what they have admitted to (in terms of centrifuges and production lines), which IF they had a secret parallel program (with the 'public' one used for diplomacy and the real one for capability) would be BLOWN out of the water. So you basically assume they are not hiding anything more.

Two, you assume that IF they didn't produce it themselves, then they must 'have a small amount for experimental purposes', which has no basis in fact (as you said the article was lacking in specifics) but judging from the IAEA's past I'd think it couldn't be "minuscule" anything if they actually called them on it. I could just as easily assume they have a large amount, enough in fact to assemble and entire bomb on the same basis.

Do you feel lucky? Well... do ya?

I don't believe in luck. But I have no objections whatsover in your rebutal. Of course what you write I to have considered. It would be foolish at best to not carefully consider what you wrote.
However. Based on the many what turned out to be inaccurate articles written by so many different sources that made claims to huge numbers of fully functional P2 type centrifuges being obtained from sources in Pak, Germany, Ukraine, we then found out they most probably only had about 1000 or so.
Fully short of some 50,000 units properly synchronized along with a lot of other semi-automated as well as manual process in place required to create a uranium bomb.
We have to keep in mind, and I am not going to go into the long explainations I did earlier on, as to how many different things must be put into place in order to achieve both the engineering and manufacturing techniques reguired to process sufficient amounts of greater then 85% U235. Unless they are obtaining large amounts of pure UF6 gas from Pakistan or China, then they must perfect a number of metelargical processes to get from yellow cake to UF6.
And we are not be shown if they have put in place the required industrial processes to mass produce the gas at this point.
One could have all the proper type centrifuges in place and simply not have the large quantities of UF6 feed stock for a long time.
And that is why I believe the time frame was adjusted up for public consumption some months back.
But surely I do not trust the bastards period. And as I had commented twice in the recent past on this issue, I believe we are waiting for the next generation of super deep penetrator ordnance systems to be perfected. Once our military is happy with how deep the bombs can go into solid bed rock, e.g. greater then 150 feet or more, then I am all for us simply doing a pre-emptive strike on all their known underground facilites and of course all facilites relating even remotely to nuclear programs above ground, and making it clear we will also take out their petrochemical and gasoline refining plants etc., at our discretion.
I am not wimply on ripping them a new one believe me. I just am not knee jerking on mostly contradicting reports we get and how the L/MSM play out the little info that has been made public.

I should have added something along this line based on your statement:
"but judging from the IAEA's past I'd think it couldn't be "minuscule" anything if they actually called them on it. I could just as easily assume they have a large amount, enough in fact to assemble and entire bomb on the same basis."

Likewise you are making assumptions.
We where never given any idea as how much enriched uranium was found nor at what level of enrichment was found.
It is one thing for say the Iranian president to hold a tiny capsule of what may have only been a miniscule, perhaps a few milligrams of perhaps 5% U235, up to the public announcing they where now a member of the nuclear club, and another thing to literally tens of thousands of times that amount at almost 85% greater enrichment level.
I continue to sense a lot of our FReeper readership due to no fault of their own do not have a good grasp as to how one manufactures weapon grade uranium, nor how one processes say spent fuel rods in order to then extract plutonium 239 in sufficient quantities to provide the core for a low yield atomic weapon.
It is not as simple a task as is advertised in these reports.
And arguments like some have used in the past as how the US was able to in the forties to manufacture both versions of the bomb do not stand up. We had all the associated manufacturing industries in place, that was required to obtain the required fission grade materials.
To be fair to both of us, as well as the whole FReeper community, at best these short narratives we write does little to outline the whole operation required to obtain reliable weapon grade uranium or plutonium.
And I hate to think I am brow beating any of us or in some way misleading.
I just do not think they are anywhere near having all the things in place to manufacture atomic weapons.
But I stress I don't trust them. They want to fabricate nuclear weapons. I have no doubt. I just do not think they are able to just yet to obtain by themselves the required quantities of uranium/plutonium required to assemble the weapons. And what would you have us do?
Would you like to see us drop a number of current generation deep penetrators onto a few of their sites, that most likely will not penetrate to the required deep we believe their facilites are at, and therefore not destroy the facilities.
This stuff is very complicated. Our Airforce is working on new generation deep penetrators that will be sufficient to get the job done. One cannot simply drop such ordnance onto a given site and then send in inspectors to go deep underground to see if the bombs took out the target. Any pre-emptive strike must be a total success. I'll leave it go at that.