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While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes

[Wall Street Journal] John Bolton - The rationality of continued Western negotiations with Iran depends on two assumptions: that Iran is far enough away from having deliverable nuclear weapons that we don't incur excessive risks by talking; and that by talking we don't materially impede the option to use military force. Implicit in the latter case is the further assumption that the military option is static - that it remains equally viable a year from now as it is today. Every day that goes by allows Iran to increase the threat it poses, and the viability of the military option steadily declines over time. While the negotiations proceed, Iran continues both to convert uranium from a solid (uranium oxide, U3O8, also called yellowcake) to a gas (uranium hexafluoride, UF6) at its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. As Iran increases its UF6 inventory and its technical expertise, however, the impact of destroying the facility diminishes. Iran is building a stockpile of UF6 that it can subsequently enrich even while it reconstructs Isfahan after an attack, or builds a new conversion facility elsewhere. Delay also permits Iran to increase its stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) - that is, UF6 gas in which the U235 isotope concentration is raised. As its LEU stockpile increases, so too does Tehran's capacity to enrich it to weapons-grade concentrations. Accordingly, destroying Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz does not eliminate its existing enriched uranium (LEU), which the IAEA estimated in May 2008 to be approximately half what is needed for one nuclear weapon. Iran is thus more than two-thirds of the way to weapons-grade uranium with each kilogram of uranium it enriches to LEU levels. The writer, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations.
2008-08-05 08:00:00
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