Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make bomb: U.S.

[Al-zakir]

Sun Mar 1, 2009 10:15am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.

"We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen said on CNN's "State of the Union" program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

"And Iran having nuclear weapons, I've believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome -- for the region and for the world," Mullen said.

A watchdog report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago said Iran had built up a stockpile of nuclear fuel, raising alarm among Western governments that Tehran might have understated by one third how much uranium it has enriched.

The United States suspects Iran of trying to use its nuclear program to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists it is purely for the peaceful generation of electricity. Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which favors diplomatic engagement with Tehran to defuse the dispute over its nuclear intentions, called Iran's nuclear program an "urgent problem" the international community must address.

The IAEA report showed a significant increase in Iran's reported stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) since November to 1,010 kg -- enough, some physicists say, for possible conversion into high-enriched uranium for one bomb.

The IAEA later said Iran was cooperating well with U.N. nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched, suggesting the uranium accounting shortfall might not have been deliberate evasion.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make bomb: U.S. | International | Reuters

 

[metalfalcon]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.

Oh Scary, Scary.

So Uncle SAM is Planning to TEAM UP with ISRAEL and Take on Iran. Good Luck Folks, Already Two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has made you almost Bankrupt, Just Attack Iran and That will be the Last thing Americans/Israelis Ever DID.

 

[Pk_Thunder]

What are Iran’s nuclear plans?​

IT has now become a guessing game. Will Iran manufacture a nuclear bomb in the immediate future? Some, such as Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, believe, “It is likely.” But others, such as his boss Defence Secretary Robert Gates, are convinced, “They [the Iranians] are not close to a weapon.” To add to the confusion is the UN atomic agency which has recently issued a report that is a bare statement of the facts in a non-committal manner: Iran has enriched 1,010 kilogrammes of uranium to a low-grade level.

The IAEA report makes no observation on whether Iran plans using this stockpile of fissile material to produce a bomb. And if so, when? Needless to say such conjectures only emphasise a futile approach. The fact is that Iran has acquired the capability to make a nuclear bomb but has not actually acquired the deadly weapon. But it could if international politics in the region force it to do so. Were the world powers, which have staked their strategic claim to the Gulf region, to act discreetly there is no reason why Iran would want to go for the bomb, as it has said time and again.

The sad truth is that the Bush administration made confrontation with Iran the centre-piece of its Gulf policy. Opportunities had arisen in the past when even a nod from Washington could have broken the deadlock that caused a breakdown in the negotiations between the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) and Iran. Tehran had demanded a direct dialogue with the American government which Mr Bush refused. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House and he has toned down the American belligerency towards Iran there is much hope in the air. The new president has indicated that his administration is willing to talk to Tehran. Although the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, has adopted a hard-line stance on the nuclear issue, the chapter is not being regarded as closed. With Iranian elections due in June and the erstwhile pragmatic president Mohammad Khatami one of the contenders, options of a dialogue remain wide open.

 

[qsaark]

Senate Panel Told Tehran Has Not Made Decision to Pursue Nuclear Weapons

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 11, 2009; A04


Iran has not produced the highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon and has not decided to do so, U.S. intelligence officials told Congress yesterday, an assessment that contrasts with a stark Israeli warning days earlier that Iran has crossed the "technological threshold" in its pursuit of the bomb.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said that Iran has not decided to pursue the production of weapons-grade uranium and the parallel ability to load it onto a ballistic missile.

"The overall situation -- and the intelligence community agrees on this -- [is] that Iran has not decided to press forward . . . to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile," Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Our current estimate is that the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015."

The five-year spread, he explained, is a result of differences in the intelligence community about how quickly Iran could develop a weapon if it rekindled a weapons program it suspended in 2003.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel that Iran is "keeping open that option."

Iran recently announced its first space launch and said Sunday that it had successfully tested an air-to-surface missile with a 70-mile range. Maples said the launch of the Safir space vehicle "does advance their knowledge and their ability to develop an intercontinental ballistic missiles," but he and Blair said there may be no connection between the country's development of missiles and any ambition to have nuclear weapons.

"I believe those are separate decisions," Blair said. "The same missiles can launch vehicles into space. They can launch warheads, either conventional or nuclear, onto . . . land targets, and Iran is pursuing those -- for those multiple purposes. Whether they develop a nuclear weapon which could then be put in that . . . warhead, I believe, is a . . . separate decision which Iran has not made yet."

Israeli officials have a different view of Iran's goals.

"Reaching a military-grade nuclear capability is a question of synchronizing its strategy with the production of a nuclear bomb," Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel's chief of military intelligence, told cabinet ministers, according to a senior Israeli official briefing reporters in Jerusalem. "Iran continues to stockpile hundreds of kilograms of low-level enriched uranium and hopes to use the dialogue with the West to buy the time it requires in order to move towards an ability to manufacture a nuclear bomb."

Blair said Israel was working from the same facts but had drawn a different interpretation of their meaning.

"The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view," he said.

A similar difference of opinion surfaced last week, when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen said he thought that Iran had enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on the same day that Iran was "not close to a weapon."

Blair was asked about the Chinese military and specifically a weekend incident in the South China Sea involving a U.S. ocean surveillance ship and five Chinese vessels in international waters. The intelligence chief called it the most serious episode between the two nations since 2001, when tensions rose over a collision between Chinese fighters and a U.S. surveillance aircraft in roughly the same region.

"They seem to be more militarily aggressive," Blair said, adding: "I think the debate is still on in China whether, as their military power increases, they will be used for good or for pushing people around."