Iran and the Bomb (concise summary of the currrent situation)

[oblivious]

Norman Dombey is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University.

Iran and the Bomb

... So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme.

...On 23 December, the Security Council finally agreed its response to Iranian non-compliance with Resolution 1696. Resolution 1737 laid the foundations for a US strike on Iran. It welcomes the commitment of China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, the US and the EU to a negotiated solution, then proceeds to render such a solution highly improbable by depriving Iran of its right to any nuclear capability other than the electricity-generating reactor at Bushehr which Russia is building. The resolution includes Iranian work on missiles in its list of activities requiring sanctions even though the IAEA has no competence in missiles. The model used here is clearly that of Resolution 687 of 1991 following the first Gulf War, which deprived Iraq of its right to any nuclear or missile capability as part of the ceasefire arrangements.

...So it is likely, once there has been an appropriate period of discussion, consultation, interpretation and so on, with Russia and China insisting that the resolution gives no authority for military action, that Bush will order a strike on these facilities and say that it was ordered ‘in support of the authority of the UN’, thereby repeating one of the many justifications offered for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Last April, Hersh quoted a US air force analyst who had studied satellite photographs of the nuclear facilities and estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n02/domb01_.html