Does the New Iran NIE Change Anything?

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Does the New Iran NIE Change Anything?

Thursday, December 6th, 2007 | Middle East |

I worked as a manager for 30 years in the US nuclear weapons program and have been a consultant to places like Los Alamos for the past six years.

The NIE, if correct, still is of concern. Making nuclear weapons involves two major initiatives: designing/building the weapon and getting the nuclear material for the weapon. The NIE appears to say that the former has been (temporarily?) suspended, while the latter is proceeding. Getting the nuclear material for a uranium bomb is by far the most difficult and time consuming part of the problem. The US pursued parallel programs (uranium and plutonium) in the Manhattan Project. US physicists were so sure that the uranium bomb would work that they did not even test it before using the uranium bomb on Japan (the one we tested in southern New Mexico was the plutonium bomb). It is likely that the physics and manufacturing challenges for the Iranians are modest at best. (Many of the physics students in my grad school 40 years ago were Iranians that planned to return home.) Again, the difficult job is getting sufficient enriched uranium, and that program continues to be accelerated.

So… the NIE says that the Iranians have suspended their weaponization efforts, but in the total critical path to getting a bomb, I am not sure that it matters.

And we have reason to believe that Iran is still refining uranium based on an intelligence report not from the Bush administration but from the IAEA:

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program highlights Tehran’s cooperation with the agency. But the report makes clear that Iran continues to defy international demands for a halt to its uranium enrichment program.

So the news that Iran isn’t developing its weapon program - assuming it’s even true - doesn’t seem like that big of a deal if it’s still refining uranium.

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