Iran, the bomb, and all that...

A revealing, excellent post by life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness on Irans pursuit of the bomb. It will come to a head soon. Either Iran will get the bomb (most likely) or there will be regime change facilitated by the US.

"one significant purpose"...And that is, to make plutonium. The quotation is from James Schlesinger, ex-you-name-it, but, as the Russians might say, he knows his onions. In Dr. S's case, he knows nuclear weapons and what it takes to develop them. The context is the fatally-flawed deal that our Euro buds have just gotten with the mad mullahs in one of the founding partners of the Axis of Evil.

The agreement with Iran has this fatal flaw: it prohibits uranium enrichment, but is silent on the manufacture of plutonium. From today's New York Times, a story with the shockingly accurate (for the Times) headline, "Iranians Retain Plutonium Plan in Nuclear Deal":

European diplomats said the issue of suspending Iran's plutonium program, while long discussed with Tehran, was set aside during recent negotiations as a concession to getting the more limited suspension deal. The uranium issue was seen as more pressing, they said, while plutonium production is years away and can be addressed in the future.

But American experts expressed doubts about the European approach, suggesting it had addressed only half the atomic threat. Their main concern is a site at Arak, where Iranian construction crews are starting work on a 40-megawatt heavy water reactor that will make plutonium.

"This is an obvious omission," James R. Schlesinger, a former energy secretary and secretary of defense, said in an interview. "A heavy water reactor of 40 megawatts is likely to have one significant purpose - the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons."

The American experts are, of course, right. Gary Milhollin, an anti-nuke stalwart, notes that “If you look around the world at heavy water reactors of this size, virtually all of them have been used to make bombs…[the agreement] doesn’t make sense. You’re cutting off one path to the bomb but leaving another open.”

Such an agreement may please the Axis of Weasels, i.e. our Euro buds, and the monkey-men of the International Atomic Energy Agency (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil of proliferators), but they don’t get the job done. That job is to ensure that Islamist maniacs such as those who now rule Iran never get their paws on nuclear weapons. Agreements with the mad mullahs simply are not kept by them, nor would any but a fool think they would be. From the Times, even the Times which usually presents free Western democracies and the Iranian thugocracy as being on the same moral plane, notes that

Last year, France, Germany and Britain struck a similar nuclear freeze with Iran, which also omitted the Arak reactor. That agreement fell apart in June after the Iranians decided to resume work on their centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

It should be clear that the only thing that will work with Iran is regime change. The alternative is to keep on making paper agreements that are shredded by the mullahs moments after the ink is dry. Sooner or later, this will lead to Iran having nuclear weapons, which would then be used on Israel – unless Israel pre-emptively strikes first.

No sane person wants to see either TelAviv or Tehran go up in a mushroom cloud. Better regime change, even one that costs thousands of Iranian lives and perhaps Americans as well, than a nuclear exchange that costs hundreds of thousands of lives. Who knows, if we do this one right, we might even get the Iranians to take charge of their own nation and not need to use military force.