Iran Is da Bomb

[Darwin]

Or more accurately Iran likely has the bomb. The head of the CIA stated today that Iran has enriched enough uranium for two bombs. This means that they almost certainly have at least one. With enough fissile material and a good machine shop a bunch of bright high-schoolers could build a gun-type bomb no sweat. It's why the Manhattan Project eggheads did not bother testing their gun barrel bomb and tested the far trickier plutonium implosion device instead. They were dead certain the gun version would work but not so much with the implosion version.

We don't have to worry about the Iranians getting a hydrogen bomb anytime soon because that's a project of half a dozen magnitudes more difficulty. And they only really need the crudest weapon possible to bully their neighbors and of course threaten Israel. Not a day for good news of any sort.

[tom502]

I think they need the bomb. But, I don't think they have it. They have to do a lot more to make one.

[Curtisp]

Don't sweat it, if and when they do, the Israelis will fix their asses for us, again!

[tom502]

I don't think so. the UN should crack down on Israel, they have a covert nuclear arsenal, has not signed to the NPT, and do not have the IAEA observations, all of which Iran does. The even attempted to sell nukes to S. Africa in the past. If Israel does anything, I think it may start WW3, every Muslim, and Arab will attack Israel, and Iran's allies, Russia, and China may step in.

[bipolarbear1968]

We would turn Iran into dust.

No, Tom. I don't think you want Iran to have the "bomb" by any means.

[Darwin]

"every Muslim, and Arab will attack Israel, and Iran's allies, Russia, and China may step in"

If every Muslim and Arab attacks Israel there will be a whole lot of deceased Muslims and Arabs, and Israelis too of course but the ratio would likely be about a thousand to one if the country's actual existence was mortally threatened. Russia and China are too smart to get directly involved in a shooting war with Israel unless they are directly attacked which is vanishingly unlikely. The western democracies publicly huff and puff about the Israeli nuclear arsenal but they do little because of the exceedingly low probability that Israel will ever attack them. The Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and the Iranians can scarcely be so confident.

[Roo]

Jordan and Egypt are their strongest allies, currently, but I fully agree that China and Russia would never step in on behalf of Iran for anything. They are merely lucrative business partners, but as far as raw materials are concerned, China is almost done with their little Africa project and maybe they won't need Iran anymore. Then again, they don't give a shit who their allies are, it's all about the renmenbi. Or the Maos, if you will.

[Darwin]

As far as Iran not having a bomb yet I beg to differ. Although there is no equivalent to Los Alamos in Iran it ain't exactly Somalia or Yemen. They are perfectly capable of constructing a simple gun barrel bomb of 10-20 kilotons yield this very minute and so I can only assume they already have. It would be a matter of mere weeks if they only just started today but all those years of struggling to enrich enough fissile material for a weapon will surely not have been wasted and it is a near certitude that they already have a device just waiting for enough uranium to plug into it. Building such a simple weapon is an entirely trivial matter compared to a thermonuclear device which takes a highly advanced industrial state to build. Israel on the other hand is in fact a highly advanced industrial state and so it likely possesses a fair number of intermediate yield, 50-300 kilotons, thermonuclear devices that are completely weaponized, mounted on widely dispersed aircraft, and ready to deploy in minutes. Iran's continued existence is a hell of a lot more tenuous than they think it is.

[danielan]

What do you do with 1 bomb?

Blow up the Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Etc Holy Land? Bad Idea.

Blow up anyone else? Bad Idea. Now you have no ace anymore and a bunch of enemies.

Your best best (short of not wasting your time in the first place), IMO, is to blow it up as a demonstration then loudly claim there are plenty more where that came from.

[sgreger1]

They will never nuke Israel, that whole general area is considered holy land by both the Muslims and the Jews, no one is going to destroy it. I agree with Danielan, if they were smart they would videotape them setting it off on a remote test range, then plaster the video all over the media and say they have factories churning these things out like a dildo factory in san francisco.

[Roo]

churning these things out like a dildo factory in san francisco.

There's a business idea for you bud! Make Bigblue1 head of sales and texasmade the chief product tester/quality inspector/sniffer.

[Curtisp]

I think they need the bomb. But, I don't think they have it. They have to do a lot more to make one.

You think Iran needs a bomb?..I don't care about your diploma in snus,( i quit smoking thanks to snus.) But, damn, i want to try whatever it is you've been inhaling.

[tom502]

The US bullies the world because of it's immense stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and seeks to push non-subservient nations into poverty, and attack them at will. The US agression, sadly, make all other soverign nations need a nuclear deterrence.

[Curtisp]

The US bullies the world because of it's immense stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and seeks to push non-subservient nations into poverty, and attack them at will. The US agression, sadly, make all other soverign nations need a nuclear deterrence.

Tom, "bullies" is a strong word, i do however think "forcing" our democratic ideaology on others is wrong, so i agree with you there to a point. But, you do not EVER want a religious fundamentalist nation, or group, to EVER have nuclear weapons.

[danielan]

Tom. This position is still B.S. We "force" our "democratic ideology" with diplomacy, capitalism and our conventional military capabilities.

Some tiny country 6000+ miles from the US has no worry about our "massive" nuclear arsenal.

Unless and until they go nuclear on us or our allies (or for that matter, countries we've met once at a cocktail party).

Then all bets are off, but we'd still probably just carpet bomb them out of existence conventionally.