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How Iran Could Get the Bomb Overnight
(Wall Street Journal) Edward Jay Epstein - The West has tried to stop Iran from manufacturing nuclear weapons by diplomacy, sanctions and cybersabotage, and with the threat of military action if Tehran crosses red lines in moving toward the final stages of making a bomb. If Iran becomes discouraged in its efforts, an easier and more immediately dangerous option is available: buying nuclear weapons from North Korea. To further enrich its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade material, Tehran would need to reconfigure its centrifuges. Since those centrifuges are closely monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran would have to expel the inspectors. Then it would take four to six months - according to the head of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, Amos Yadlin - to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb. During this interval, Tehran would effectively invite an attack by the U.S. and Israel. Since the U.S. has munitions capable of destroying all of Iran's centrifuges above ground at Natanz and sealing off the entrances to its underground facilities at Fordo - plus the Stealth bombers to deliver these knockout punches - Iran would likely lose the means to manufacture nuclear weapons before it could make a single one. But what if Iran buys one or two nuclear warheads from North Korea? Pyongyang claims it has nuclear warheads that fit on its No Dong medium-range ballistic missiles. If that claim is true, then mounting the warheads on Iran's Shahab missiles, which are copies of the North Korean ones, would present little problem.