Report: Iran 2 to 3 years away from building a nuclear weapon
This gets boring.
No intelligence agency, with regard to any adversary nation in HISTORY has been correct on the over/under in predicting when the enemy gets the bomb.
The US thought the USSR was 5 years out in 1949 when they blew an A-bomb, then 3 years out when they detonated their H Bomb.
Nobody warned of Pakistan, especially India, and they had a STOCKPILE when they did it.
China shocked the world in 64
It took the USA, in 1944-45, with ancient technology, in complete secret, 10 months to go from the factory finish to the bomb.
I give the Iranians the same timeline.
10 months from the day they complete the centrifuge train to the day they can deliver a gravity weapon.
All I have is common sense and history. Not much to go on? It works as well as american intelligence has on this issue.
LONDON (AP) — Iran is two to three years away from having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, a leading security think tank said Wednesday.But the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said domestic opposition to outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could still help put the brakes on its nuclear development efforts.
"There are signs that political and economic pressure is having an impact in Tehran," said John Chipman, the institute's chief executive, speaking at the launch of the its annual publication, The Military Balance.
Although Chipman said Iran could be as little as two years away from a bomb, other authorities say it could take Tehran significantly longer to reach that point.
Both John Negroponte, the head of national intelligence for the U.S., and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have said Iran is perhaps four years from the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon.
Doesn't that make you feel good? 4 years, brought to you by the 9/11 preventing, Iraqi WMD, slam dunk convincing , USSR collapse predicting, Shah of Iran falling warning - SEE EYE AYE.
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5 comments:
Given the temperament of the age, I would suggest that the sooner Iran gets nuclear weapons which it will inevitably use the better. Apparently, the West won't do anything before the bombs go off. Iran has been pretty upfront about its intentions, so I can't help but think that the responsibilities for happens is with us, as it is with a person who pets a dog known to be rabid.
I hope that after the upcoming war, we will have enough sense to realize that we can't afford a pacifism/multiculturalism stance that only leads to far worse and nastier wars.
Perhaps, I should hawk a product here, but I suggest the book "Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit" by Joshua Foa Dienstag. It keep me going.
Whose fault or responsibility? Surely you are not laying all the blame at America's feet?
Tom
I am saying that we are institutionally STUPID.
Iran cannot be deterred from getting the bomb.
Arguing that the undeterrable is further away than it is from Negroponte et al pushes the fateful decisions further away.
Why?
Because they can't make them.
If the repubs cannot bring themselves to make these decisions, will Nancy Pelosi? Will Joe Biden? Will Feingold?
We are not ready to do anything but CONTAIN ..in other words, if Iran cannot be deterred from USING the weapon, we will have to suffer it's use.
Will all that blame be america's?
Depends on where Hizballah or IT's enigmatic allies deliver it.
However, it should be sobering that the weapon's mere EXISTANCE will cause the emigration of 27% (according to the last poll) of our main and only dependable ally's population.
What are we prepared to do in our our name, for ourselves?
Israel seems nearly paralyzed by the realization that they WILL have to act, and probably do it alone.
We are not yet prepared for these kinds of decisions, let alone actions AS A PEOPLE. Where is the admin?
The horror is that the same quirk of human nature that decrees the Stop sign not be put up until after the fatal crash occurs will also apply in this case. If we or the Israelis come out of our stupor in time to launch a pre-emptive strike, all hell will break loose in any case. We came up with the bomb in 10 months because we were in the middle of a war for our survival. As are we now. The difference is that we knew it then, we had already lost hundreds of thousands of our military and were faced with even worse losses in a land invasion of Japan.
The irony is that the same people wringing their hands over the losses in Iraq -- and ignoring the ones on 9/11 -- are the same ones who will prevent us from preventing much worse losses in the future.
I still don't understand some of the pansies' thinking and why it still falls to us. GWB took on Iraq with a little help from our allies but we are not the ones who colonized the SE Asia and the Middle East. Granted we stuck our noses into their internal affairs but the mess was not entirely our doing and Britain and France should share the burdens. Both of those countries are nuclear. What separates strong leadership from incompetent madness?
Tom
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