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Imagining an Iranian ICBM

(National Post-Canada) Jonathan Kay - Last week at a conference dedicated to "Countering the Iranian threat," put on by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the most interesting speaker was a gruff Israeli engineer named Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel's Missile Defense Organization. Rubin spent much of his professional life carefully scrutinizing Iran's growing inventory of WMD-related technology. His research is guided by the simple question: What are these people building? Everyone already knows that Iran has the technology to enrich uranium, he explained. And once that technology is in place, it is pointless to debate whether it is designed for "civilian" or "military" purposes - it's just a question of the number of spin cycles. The other aspects of bomb construction are relatively minor. In the Manhattan Project, he noted, 90% of the effort went toward enriching the needed nuclear material. Once that was completed, it took only six months till a successful explosion was achieved. Iran has developed an indigenous missile-production infrastructure. The country now has the capability to design, construct and deploy multi-stage solid-fuel systems roughly similar to the U.S. Polaris A1 and Minuteman I. "Don't be fooled by those who say the Iranians are incapable of [advanced projects]," Rubin said. "I can see the confidence of their engineers. I've seen the technology. I can see the way they are solving problems faster and faster." Rubin concluded by ticking off the elements of Iran's advanced tech research: (1) nuclear enrichment, (2) solid-propellant ballistic missiles, (3) space-launch technology. Then he asked: "If a scientist from Mars would come down and say 'Hey, there's a country on earth that has these three programs - what does it want?' the answer is obvious: a nuclear ICBM."
2010-12-17 08:41:01
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