National Review
Iran probably already has the bomb. Here’s what to do about it
Washington lawmakers are being deceived by the intelligence and defense communities that are grossly underestimating Iran’s nuclear threat, just as they have done with North Korea. The dominant “worst case” thinking of Washington assumes that Iran does not yet have atomic weapons, but it could “burst” to develop one or a few atom bombs in a year, which the intelligence community is supposed to detect in time to warn and preventive measures. . Rowan Scarborough recently reported in the Washington Times that “during a private conversation in July 2017 before a Japanese-American audience”, Net Assessment director James H. Baker of the Pentagon reported that “Iran, if it chooses, can ‘safely’ to possess a nuclear weapon in 10-15 years. ”Another dominant view of the“ worst case scenario ”is that Iran could comply with the Obama administration’s Joint Action Plan (JCPOA) and legitimately slide towards nuclear weapons capacity in 10 to 10 years. 15. The Trump administration canceled the JCPOA for legitimate reasons, but the Biden government promised to revive it. In contrast to these views, we warned in these pages in February 2016 that Iran probably already had atomic weapons delivered by missiles and satellites: , from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] reports and other sources, that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. . . . Before 2003, Iran was making nuclear weapon components, such as bridge detonators and neutron initiators, carrying out non-fissile explosive experiments on a nuclear implosion device and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile. When our World War II Manhattan Project reached that stage, the United States was only a few months away from making the first atomic bombs. That was Iran’s status 18 years ago. And the Manhattan Project used technology from the 1940s to invent and use the first atomic weapons in just three years, starting with a purely theoretical understanding. Therefore, in 2003, Iran was already an early state for nuclear missiles. But for at least the past decade, the intelligence community has assessed annually that Iran could build atomic weapons in a year or less. On the other hand, less than a month ago, independent analysts at the Institute of Science and International Security estimated that Iran had an escape time of just three months for its first nuclear weapon and five months for the second. And there is no reason to believe that the intelligence capabilities of the United States and the IAEA are so perfect that they can detect with certainty Iran’s clandestine efforts to build atomic weapons. In fact, the United States and the IAEA did not even know about Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program until Iranian dissidents exposed it in 2002. The IAEA and the US intelligence community have long been terrible nuclear watchdogs. IAEA inspections have failed to discover clandestine nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq and Libya. In 1998, the intelligence community’s “Global Threat Assessment” did not warn that, just a few months later, Pakistan and India would openly “become nuclear” with a series of nuclear weapons tests. US intelligence has often underestimated the nuclear threats from Russia, China and North Korea. It is probably now doing the same with Iran. Contrary to mainstream thinking: Iran can build sophisticated nuclear weapons by relying on component testing, without nuclear testing. The USA, Israel, Pakistan and India used the component testing approach. The United States ‘Hiroshima bomb has not been tested, nor have the United States’ most sophisticated thermonuclear warheads over the past 30 years. Nuclear tests in Pakistan and India in 1998 were done for political reasons, not technological necessities. IAEA inspections are limited to civilian sites and restricted to military bases, including several highly suspicious underground facilities where Iran’s nuclear weapons program almost certainly continues clandestinely. The images of a vast underground site, heavily protected by SAMs, show high voltage lines ending in the subsoil, potentially delivering huge amounts of electricity, consistent with the feeding of uranium enrichment centrifuges on an industrial scale. Therefore, IAEA reports on Iran’s enriched uranium stock are almost certainly not everything. The US intelligence assessment that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is contradicted both by Iran’s nuclear files, stolen by Israel in 2018, indicating Iran’s ongoing nuclear weapons program (reported in several locations in 2006 , 2017 and 2019) and for Iran’s rapid resumption of uranium enrichment to prohibited levels. This demonstrates the existing capacity to rapidly produce uranium suitable for weapons. Reports from the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission (EMP) elaborate on these and other related issues. Most estimates assume that Iran needs five to ten kilograms of highly enriched uranium-235 or plutonium-239 (more than 90%) to make an atomic weapon, as happened with the first crudely designed atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But good design requires only one to two pounds. Crude atomic bombs can be designed with uranium-235 or plutonium-239 enriched to just 50%. Iran’s nuclear and missile programs are not only indigenous, but receive significant aid from Russia, China, North Korea and probably Pakistan. Although the intelligence community uses an internal nuclear test as confirmation that a country, including Iran, has developed a nuclear weapon, it leaves it open to deceiving itself, our leadership and our allies. Iran and North Korea have close working relationships, North Korea will do anything for Iranian oil and the Iranians have already been present in some of North Korea’s nuclear tests. North Korea could easily have exchanged information with Iran and even tested Iranian nuclear weapons, as well as its own – if there is any difference – without the United States and its allies knowing what weapons were being tested. North Korean scientists are in Iran helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s “space program” that provides coverage for the development of ICBMs. As we warned five years ago, it is implausible and imprudent to assume that Iran refrained from making atomic weapons for more than a decade, when it could do so clandestinely: Iran probably has nuclear warheads for the Shahab-III medium-range missile, which they tested to make EMP attacks. . . . And at the time of its choice, Iran could launch a surprise PEM attack against the United States by satellite, as they apparently did with the help of North Korea. Why has Iran not become overtly nuclear, like North Korea? There are several explanations. On the one hand, North Korea is protected by China and lives in a safer neighborhood, where South Korea and Japan are reluctant to support US military options to disarm Pyongyang. In contrast, Iran’s neighbors, Israel and moderate Arab countries, are much more likely to support air strikes to disarm Tehran. As we warned you five years ago, Iran probably wants to build enough nuclear missiles to make its capabilities irreversible: Iran could be building a nuclear-capable missile force, partially hidden in tunnels, as suggested by its revelation of a vast base-based underground system. of missiles. . . . Iran is preparing for a large, detachable, survivable war missile force – to which nuclear weapons can be quickly added as they are manufactured. In addition, Iran wants to preserve the fiction of its non-nuclear status. It obtained far more economic and strategic benefits from JCPOA and threats to “become nuclear” than North Korea to “openly become nuclear”. Ominously, Iran may be renouncing the benefits of deterring an open nuclear stance because it is preparing for an amazing future use of nuclear capabilities to advance the global theological agenda of the Ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the largest and most sophisticated terrorist organization of the world. So, what can we do to face this almost certain threat? Some better options are, unfortunately, much more difficult at this point. Non-gun control solutions like the JCPOA will only make things worse, just as gun control did with North Korea, offering false hopes as the nuclear threat increases. Disarming Iran from nuclear capabilities through air strikes or invasion would be very risky, as we do not know where all of its nuclear missiles are hiding. The United States was dissuaded from disarming North Korea when that country’s nuclear missile capabilities were only incipient. Regime change sponsoring a popular revolution could be a practical solution – the Iranian people would overthrow their Islamic government if they could. But the regime itself has proved adept at suppressing popular uprisings and can use the United States’ involvement, supposed or real, as a propaganda tool in such an effort, as it did before. But there are things we can do now, including: Hardening US power grids and other critical life-sustaining infrastructure against an EMP nuclear attack, which is described in Iran’s military doctrine and would be the most easily executed and most damaging nuclear threat in the world. regime. The White House and STRATCOM should now consider Iran as a nuclear missile threat, increase scrutiny by national technical means of verification and by human intelligence to locate nuclear weapons capabilities and prepare preventive options should action become necessary. Strengthen national missile defenses and, especially, deploy modern space-based defenses. For example, the Brilliant Pebbles project of the 1990s, canceled by the Clinton administration, could start rolling out in five years, cost about $ 20 billion in current dollars, and essentially intercept all ballistic missiles over a few hundred miles. , including from Russia and China. Our national survival must not only depend on attack first or deterrence. The American people prefer to be defended rather than avenged. Ambassador R. James Woolsey is a former director of the intelligence center; William R. Graham was President Reagan’s scientific adviser and interim administrator for NASA, and chaired the Congressional EMP Committee; Ambassador Henry F. Cooper was director of the Strategic Defense Initiative and chief negotiator in Defense and Space Talks with the USSR; Fritz Ermarth was president of the National Intelligence Council; Peter Vincent Pry is the executive director of the EMP Task Force on Homeland and Homeland Security and served on the Congressional Strategic Stance Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA.