Free Republic

According to a RAND report, the United States and the world have blown the chance to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.  Half a year ago, US air strikes and a no-fly zone might have prevented a nuclear bomb in the hands of the martyrdom ideology of Khomeinist Iran.  That window has now slammed shut.  In about 8 weeks, the RAND report concludes, Iran will have the nuclear material for its first bomb. RAND Corporation's Gregory S. Jones believes that Iran has produced almost 40 kilograms of uranium enriched near 20% percent.  Jones suggests that air strikes can no longer stop Ahmadinejad's...

Iran's nuclear energy chief and Vice President Fereidoun Abbasi was quoted Wednesday by the official Iranian IRNA news agency as saying Tehran plans to soon set up the more advanced type of centrifuges, suitable for higher-level uranium enrichment, at the Fordo site near the holy city of Qom in central Iran. Fordo was long kept secret and was only revealed in 2009. It was built next to a military complex to protect it in case of an attack.

Iran may be two months away from being able to create a nuclear bomb and there is little the international community can do to stop it, two new studies say. Using data released last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles and the operations of its nuclear program, U.S. weapons expert Gregory Jones calculates it could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb in just eight weeks. “It is unclear what actions the U.S. or Israel could take (short of militarily occupying Iran) that could now prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons,”...

Iran has long been at the center of international concerns, over its controversial nuclear plan. The IAEA report further proved that Iran is capable of making a nuclear weapon. It confirmed that Iran has refined nearly 2 tons of low-enriched uranium to the purity of 20-percent. That's a critical development. The report says the next step, purifying from 20 to 90 percent, would take just six months. Iran has increased its low-enriched uranium stockpile by more than six times. And the current storage is enough for one or two nuclear bombs, if enriched to 90 percent purity.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency now not only admits that Iran's at work on nuclear warheads, but acknowledges that Tehran never stopped working on them -- despite no end of pleas, pledges and promises. Burned by its miscall on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the US intelligence community has played it too safe on this one, long insisting that Iran halted warhead research in 2003. There were plenty of dissenting voices. But President George Bush didn't want another fight, and President Obama's already punch drunk. Now the genie's out of the bottle of isotopes. With the departure of anti-Israel...