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"I believe you have seen where the Iranians did not meet the standard contract agreement concerning nuclear reactor purchases.
Whamo! Yet another reasons the frigen Russkie son of a bitches are up to their eye balls in screwing things up as usual.
GWB should have been screaming at the top of his lungs publically that Putin and crew are the real problem behind the Iranian problems since pre-1979. He is the only POTUS with enough balls to make blanket statements that are not always PC. His predecessors where all wimps.
So much for monitoring their fuel rods. They will find the ways to extract the plutonium as the rods are changed in three or four years. That is, based on things I have read about the type reactor to go on line soon, about the time frame required to change the rods, which could stay in in the core for up to some five years depending on how they control the reaction. And those rods, some 100 of them could yield enough plutonium to build one or two small atomic bombs."

Exactly. According to Benjamin Netanyahu, after March of 2007, Iran has stated they will build 25 nuclear weapons per year. Even if it is half that amount built we will see the first nuclear war by 2012 and likely a domestic nuclear attack much sooner. North Korea is now nuclear and much harder to deal with but we had better deal with them sooner rather then later. In the end, we must tell Russia and China that a nuclear attack by either Iran or North Korea means we launch a counter nuclear attack of the same magnitude against THEM. Saw an article last month on China building underground cities. They definately have a game plan in motion and it ain't good!

Your right on the mark. It taint good. To many soft sell negotiators on the US side prevent us from making any headway in getting China and Russia to take firm steps in controlling whom they sell nuclear technologies to. Damn Chicoms sit around laughing their butts off, while we pump billions of dollars into their economy to spend on weapon systems, as well as expanding their industrial capacities.
And obviously the Russians are working toward being a world class oil/gas exporter. They will make huge amounts of money over the next ten years that they can use to re-vitalize their military and weapon systems.
Just to name a few things that have gotten totally out of control.
Global trade has overridden national security far more then some realize.
At any rate. Iran will get the bomb eventually.
There is no doubt in my mind they can do it. I have over the past three quarters of a year or so at FR, simply provided input to some who go bonzai and knee jerk that they could produce a workable atomic weapon before they have all the industrial processes and required large synchornized series/parallel gas centrifuge systems in place.
Once they have mastered the metelargical process required to refine the yellow cake, the acidification process, the milling etc., then the final stage of converting it into highly pure HF6 and have the large gas centrifugal systems operating around the clock without going offline etc., then they can obtain enough of the required fission grade Uranium to pump out a few bombs a year, perhaps more, all depending on just how efficient and reliable the centrifuge pumps and associated plumbing, e.g. baffling, bypass valves etc., are.
That is why I think we heard recent estimates they are perhaps five to ten year away from a fully capable operation.
Of course if they are extracting enough plutonim from spent fuel rods, then that is another story. They may only be three or four years away. Surely if their obtained atomic bomb plans are not complete at this point, e.g. those they got from perhaps Pakistain, they will have plenty of time to engineer their own design. They are not stupid. Their applied research physicists, engineers will continue to move along the learning curve.
They will get the bomb. Eventually.