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Iranian Heavy Water Nuke Plant Goes Online Today
avtchillsboro writes "According to an article in the NYT, an Iranian heavy water nuke plant goes online today. From the article: 'An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The announcement comes days before Thursday's U.N. deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment — which also can be used to create nuclear weapons — or face economic and political sanctions.'"
The real problem is that Iran is not letting international inspectors see their installations. Remember what happened to Iraq in a similar case?
Future conversation:
UN: Stop enriching uranium or face political and economic consequences.
Iran: Do so and we will stop selling you oil. China will buy it if you don't. Continue your threats and we will use our position in OPEC against you.
UN: Uhhh....
Iran has money to burn, and UN sanctions don't seem to be particularly effective ways to convince to governments; it's the proletariat who suffer. In the meanwhile, Iran's government gets to play the "it's us against the (non-Muslim) world!" card again. Jihad, anyone?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
With Israel a known (suspected within 99.999%) holder of nukes, Iran sees themselves as the logical counterpoint. They do mean to make weapons, of this I have no doubt.
Peaceful purposes? The iranian prez has said Israel should be wiped off the map. He doesn't strike me as a man with peaceful intentions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One quote that might interest people from the interview is this:
Mohammad Saeidi is a practical man. Sidestepping the political, ideological and historical aspects of the nuclear dispute with the West, the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation is focused on a set of problems that must be solved logically if the country and its people are to develop to their full potential. "The country's oil and gas reserves will last a maximum of another 25 or 30 years," he says. "Therefore we have to provide other resources."
If you are an American, please don't support your current administrations drive to cause yet another war by believing their propaganda about Iran. Really, you should trust your politicians as soon as they find the WMD that they told you existed in Iraq.
Please don't let Bush plunge the world into the Realm of $200 a barrel oil prices by attacking Iran.
Naive of me, but did anyone RTFA? It says that Iran can now produce heavy water, not that they have a nuclear reactor. FFS, I thought the NYT had higher standards of journalistic integrity than to use a misleading headline.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It is my understanding that Iran would like to build a uranium nuclear device. While these are impressive--and definitely make a big boom--they are not nearly as deadly or frightening as a plutonium nuclear device. The reason? Deliverability. While a plutonium nuclear explosive can be squeezed down to a pretty small size (to fit on the tip of a cruise missile, for example), a uranium device has to be pretty massive.
Essentially, while a plutonium device is a ball of plutonium surrounded by concentric spheres of perfectly timed explosives, a uranium device is the equivalent of a 5-inch diameter gun which fires a uranium slug at a uranium target. The advantage of a plutonium device is obvious: it's small. The disadvantage of a plutonium device is the fact that it's very, very difficult to get the timing right so that you don't incinerate the plutonium before it goes critical. Meanwhile, a uranium device is dirt-simple to develop once you have the material. However, these things are huge. So huge, in fact, that you need something the size of a B29 in order to deliver it. We're talking several tons here.
Incidentally, the US developed one of each during the Manhattan Project, culminating in the two dropped bombs: Little Boy and Fat Man (no prizes for guessing which is which). While the Plutonium devices needed to be tested to make sure it worked, the scientists didn't even bother to test a uranium explosive at full scale. They just dropped the sucker.
Basically, this boils down to a pretty simple reality: even if Iran develops a uranium device, they can't deliver it. They can't put it on a missile, and I think it's a 100% certainty that Israel (or anyone else, for that matter, though Israel is the most likely target) would shoot down anything the size of a B29 flying in from Iran. If I had to guess, I'd wager that's why the Bush administration doesn't seem terribly worried about Iran. North Korea is a different matter, but Iran just isn't as big of a threat as everyone seems to be making it out to be.
And as an aside, it's certainly tempting to say "well, they could just put it on a boat and hide it and float it to a port and explode it." However, there are a couple of problems. First of all, each nuclear device that Iran develops will be a sort of force-multiplier for its power in the region. So if it develops--say--three devices, that means that losing just one is going to be a dramatic blow to its power. If you say that there's a 50/50 chance that the device will actually make it to its target, there's just no way to rationalize that risk. Much better to use the threat as leverage. The Iranian leaders don't subscribe to Western modes of thought, but they're aren't utterly irrational.
LR
1. Diplomacy, so far has failed.
2. Air strikes, don't know where all the facilities are and many of those we do are located so far underground that conventional weapons are useless. Not only that but Iran would no doubt cut off oil supplies which would cause an oil crisis.
3. Military invasion, not enough troops because of our excursion into Iraq. The only possible alternative is a draft.
4. Leave it for the next administration to sort out, the most likely scenario.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
This is not a nuclear power plant that's online (yet), but merely a facility that produces heavy water.
It's fun to get people worked up with such a headline (and almost all the AP wire sites did so), but on closer examination, it's hard to get too outraged at Iran for manufacturing something that you can buy on eBay.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/iran/index.don /alert081606_ebadi.htm7 7bc-61bb-4b7d-87e0-663033df3404.htmlm
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=mideast&c=iran
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/hrd_ira
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/02/49f8
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4114621.st
From the BBC article:
The execution of children
Torture, as well as degrading punishments such as amputation, flogging and stoning
Discrimination against women and girls
The persecution of political opponents, following last February's mass disqualification of opposition candidates in the run-up to parliamentary elections
Discrimination against minorities, including Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, and in particular followers of the Baha'i faith, including arbitrary arrest and detention.
Can we start being worried yet?
Can we start telling them they can't do this yet?
Or are these still wonderful people who should have A-bombs?
*sits and waits for the moral equivalency arguments*
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I for, one, do NOT welcome our new-clear, Shi'ite Overlords. No matter how you pronounce "nuclear", or, for that matter, "Shi'ite".
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
If Iran sells the oil to *someone*, it makes no real difference who. It just means that whoever would have sold to China, would sell to whomever Iran is now not selling to. This extra constraint on the distribution network just adds a small price per barrel. That's just as empty a threat as the UN's.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It's totally proven. Iran openly admits that it provides Hezbollah with weapons. It's openly admitted that for over two decades. I agree with the rest of your post, that Iran didn't especially time anything, but Hezbollah is a wing of the Iranian administration.
Sounds like Pakistan.. Oh wait, the US doesn't mind Pakistan having Nuclear weapons because they are an ally.. A religious fanatic ally harboring terrorists, but an ally.
this is clearly to meet energy needs, in particular the need unleash energy in israel on the megaton scale
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Eh? Heavy water is used in hundreds of modern fission nuclear reactors around the world--it acts as a moderator for the fission reaction.
Wrong. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor - sure, you don't generate the power from the heavy water itself, but it's needed for that kind of reactor. Together with uranium, which, surprise, they also are building an enrichment plant for.
While I do not completely trust this enterprise to be peaceful, I don't trust the U.S., Israel, the U.K., Russia or any of the other countries that already *have* nuclear weapons, and in the case of the U.S. have used them. Until the nuclear weapon carrying countries that already exists have dismantled their last bombs and missiles, I'll continue finding their cries about others building research facilities or nuclear plants very hypocritical.
Well, at least this time the evidence is somewhat better than the "Oh, oh, they've got metal pipes - they're building nukes!" used as a motive to invade Iraq...
Iran started its nuclear program back when the Shah was still a US puppet. Of course, I don't expect to hear anything about that from the Bushes, who put the Iran in "Iran/Contra".
It's always been a bad idea to proliferate nukes in the Mideast, a part of the world controlled by politicians defined more by death's rewards than life's opportunities. Reading more of the history of Iran's nukes helps explain why the French are so deeply involved, and how the roles of the US and Russia are so "complicated".
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make install -not war
Doesn't it seem stupid to have only a handful of countries with nuclear weapons?
My solution would for the US to build one ICBM for each country in the UN. If you're in the UN, here's ONE nuke. You only get one.
* You want true equality around the world, there it is. Every country is now equal.
* You want to end wars, you've done it. No one can invade anyone else or risk getting nuked.
* Talk about one world government? Now it's really possible.
Give them all nukes.
A country like Iran doesn't care. They're fixated on a religious war, which supercedes any concern over political matters. These people don't care if they die, because they're convinced that they will reach a special form of heaven in the process. That makes for a very, very dangeous opponent.
and the Neocons?
There is perception and then there is reality. Few politicians are what they appear.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Read up on the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, a worthless piece of shit who extensively collaborated with the Nazis, helped recruit Muslims to serve in the Waffen S.S., and never missed an opportunity to help kill more Jews.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Or rather three different ways of looking at it:
One is the grandfather clause. Basically when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed it allowed those nations who already had nukes to keep them. So the US can have them for the same reason as Russia, the UK, France, and so on. That would be the legalistic view.
Another would be because the US has a stable government with excellent protections against accidental launch, or deliberate launch by a rogue person. You can Google around for the details if you wish, but what it comes down to is that GWB can't just wake up one day and decide to nuke a country for the fun of it. He lacks the authority and the ability. The US also cares for the lives of its' citizens to a high degree, and has a stable government that doesn't get overthrown all the time. That's the somewhat moral view.
Finally, there's the simple matter that nobody can stop them. They've got the biggest military, and the amount of nukes they have is such that they can annihilate anyone they wish. There's no possibility of any sort of invasion or strike that could take out even a fraction of the US arsenal before they could retaliate. So there's simply nothing anyone can do about it. That's the practical view.
You can take it any way you like but it really isn't comparable to Iran getting nukes. The US is allowed, under internal law, to have it's nukes, they are not (despite some ranting on Slashdot) run by extremists that can launch them at any time, and there's just really nothing anyone can do to take them away. Iran isn't allowed to develop nukes, there is a concern that they would use them given that there are no controls in the country stopping their hard line government from doing so, and as it happens they can be stopped.
I'm not saying that they should be stopped, that's a different argument. However trying to say "The US has nukes so Iran getting them is the same thing," isn't the case, regardless of what level you choose to look at it on.
ASSERTION: If the Iranians build nuclear weapons, then the Iranians will use them without reservation.
If the above assertion is false, then the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should proceed playing word games with the Iranians and allow them to continue using delaying tactics. Of course, the Iranian Muslims are offering false promises in order to buy the necessary time for building a nuclear bomb.
On the other hand, if the above assertion is true, then the Western nations (which includes Japan) must act immediately without waiting for the Chinese to manipulate the UNSC into playing more word games. One possibility is to arrange for unmarked German fighter-bombers to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. This military action should be synchronized with the bombing of North-Korean nuclear facilities by unmarked Japanese fighter-bombers.
So, is the assertion true? The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the assertion is true.
How do people behave if they are genuinely committed to peace and economic development? Consider Vietnam. Washington dropped tons of agent orange on Vietnamese farmlands and forests. Today, thousands of Vietnamese are suffering and dying from this poisoning. Yet, the Vietnamese are not spending every waking moment in plotting how to kill Americans. The Vietnamese government spends most of its budget on economic development and is not attempting, in any way, to build a nuclear bomb.
Consider the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia was under Russian/Soviet oppression for more than 40 years. Yet, today, the Czechs are not spending every waking moment in plotting how to kill Russians. The Czech government spends most of its budget on economic development and is not attempting, in any way, to build a nuclear bomb.
Now, look at Iran. The Iranians spend every waking moment in plotting how to kill Americans, Iraqis, and Israelis. The Iranians give millions of dollars to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. The Iranians spend millions of dollars on building a nuclear bomb.
Is Iran committed to peace and economic development? You make the call.
An even better question is "What is the fastest way to de-capitate the Iranian government and Iranian society?"
part of the problem is that Israel has never been *serious* about earning a sustainable peace. Sure after decades of war, there are now peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and a sort of alliance with Turkey. However the fact remains that the large cause of the conflicts are almost always about nothing more than land and water.
Additionally you ahve to understand that while the vast majority of Israelis are reasonable folk and peaceloving, there are extremists (including terrorists) who feel that it is their sacred duty to create a greater Israel spanning from Sinai through Golan. These lands, in their view, must be conquered, depopulated, and resettled by Jews (a term not exactly equivalent to Israeli by modern demographic standards).
What Galloway fails to note is that Israel is an area, like Northern Ireland, where over six decades of conflict have created some really insane dynamics. Indeed I cannot think of a country whose political dynamics make less sense than modern Israel. After all, when a former Nazi sympathizer (who tried to build an alliance between a Zionist resistance group and the Nazis during WWII) can be serve a lengthy term as Foreign Minister and a short term as PM, the last place one would think this could happen would be Israel, and yet that it happened there in the 1980's with Shameer (Shameer's Nazi sympathies were well documented).
But the fact remains-- Israel is a military superpower in the region who is almost unquestioningly backed by the US, France, and other countries. Their alliance while it is their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. For example, in the run-up to the Iraq war, Lebannon exacted some serious water rights concessions from Israel despite threats by Sharon to go to war.
Now, we are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we have many troops which are not committed to the field of battle, most of the active duty troops are committed in various strategic roles (such as South Korea) and are not readily available for redeployment. I do not think it is possible to invade Iran and win by any lasting measure. What was that B5 quote about the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots? At the same time there is the fear that if Iraq stabilizes, then the US might be free to attack Iran.
So what is Iran to do?
1) Destabilize Iraq-- keep us bogged down there.
2) Develop a deterrent nuclear capability capable of holding Israel hostage in the event of pending US military action.
3) Develop ties with terrorist organizations so that if balistic missiles fail to have deterrent capabilities, other deployment options exist.
Iran has seen deterrence work on the Korean penninsula. They know that their only way away to have power in the region is to threaten US allies with massive and illegal weapons.
Ahmedinejad is hardly mad any more than Bush is as dumb as he appears. He is playing a very sophisticated game and doing quite well, and politicians are never what they appear.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Which part of "It's always been a bad idea to proliferate nukes in the Mideast" dont YOU understand?
Before Hitler rose to power in Germany, Bush Sr's father Prescott Bush funded Hitler to ensure his rise. And continued to fund Hitler even as those funds paid for bullets fired at American troops, until stopped for violating the "Trading With the Enemy" laws. Once the bullets stopped, Prescott Bush's boss Averill Harriman negotiated the deal for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in return for which the CIA overthrew the democratically elected successor to the Shah, so the Shah would keep the AIOC deal. The Shah was such a "good customer" of the US that "we" set him up with a nuclear program under Richard Nixon. Whose staff included Dick Cheney, a frequent Director of corporations funded and directed by Harriman and Bush, even through the 1980s. Who has done everything he could to give Iran "reasons" to get nukes, while supplying them with Iran/Contra military parts and recently handing them Iraq.
So don't tell ME about crazy people with nukes. I've got the whole barrel of monkeys on my radar. And, through my taxes and against my votes, many of them on my payroll.
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make install -not war
He did all the things you mentioned, but frankly the US didn't give a toss about that.
The problem was that the second largest oil field in the world would soon only be available in Euros. Which would mean that oil buyers wouldn't have to buy dollars to get the oil. Which reduces the demand for US dollars. So. supply and demand. demand for dollars decreases, the value decreases, the US dollar begins falling in value. The dollar is worth less the more of them you need to buy things, That's called inflation and guess what, devaluing dollars severely limits the US government's ability to print more of them with abandon, to pay their huge military, to pay huge subsidies to industry and farmers etc etc.
Guess what. Iran is planning to set up an oil exchange which would operate in Euros. I wonder who's going to be hit next.
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