Tuesday, September 11, 2012

IAEA’s New Intelligence on Iran

Allegedly Moving Toward Ability to Build the Bomb

The Associated Press reported today that the IAEA has received new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Diplomats have told the AP that the intelligence shows that “Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of an atomic warhead through a series of computer models that it ran sometime within the past three years.” (Associated Press, 11 September)

IAEA fears that computer modeling work is normally by physical tests of the components, and the experts agree.

“You want to have a theoretical understanding of the working of a nuclear weapon that is then related to the experiments you do on the various components,” said ISIS’s David Albright. “The two go hand-in-hand.” (AP)

The computer modeling assesses the degree of compression, or the yield, of the fissile warhead material that would set off the chain reaction that results in a nuclear explosion. The yield is measured in kilotons.

Iran consistently denies any interest or work on developing nuclear weapons. It maintains that its rapidly growing stockpile of higher enriched uranium is for use in medical research.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The IAEA and the UN has the same relevance and the credibility; to ostracize the IRI, as when it accused Iraq about possesion of weapons of mass destructions.

All these unlimited IAEA's inspections make the same sense with that one, when the IAEA scrutinized Saddam's palaces for a presence of weapons of MD.

Anonymous said...

Can you hear the war drums?

Mark Pyruz said...

Nader, I really wish when you relay MSM newswire reports on Iran's nuclear program reliant on ISIS as a primary source that you would recount all the times in the past they have been demonstrated to be factually wrong with their claims. No offense but I must point out that any seasoned Iran observer has got to be skeptical of ISIS claims at this point in tome, they've been so consistently wrong in the past. Understandable, as Albright and ISIS possess a given, predetermined agenda.

Anonymous said...

MP--- perhaps you could post two or three of the worst of ISIS's factual errors.