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February 12, 2012
'Major announcement' from Iran on their nuclear programNo, they are not going to announce they have built a bomb. That's daffy. If they were that stupid, they would get hit by Israel and the US today instead of 3 or 4 months from now. Any such announcement would unite NATO and the US against them - and even cause Russia and China to back off their support. Much more likely, they will announce their success in mastering the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including the complex process of building their own nuclear fuel rods. Previous announcements have hinted that they were close to developing their own capabilities, so it is very possible they have been able to accomplish this feat. This is bad enough, since Russia was supplying the rods for the Bushehr nuclear plant and the spent rods were sent back to Russia to prevent the Iranians from using them to make plutonium. If they can make the rods themselves, no telling what they will do with the spent fuel.
I should add that the conversion process to plutonium is long, laborious, and almost certainly beyond Iran's capabilities - today. Two or three years from now might be a different story. Mastering the fuel cycle is just one more indication of Iran's increasing technological expertise in managing their nuclear industry. Bombing may destroy the physical infrastructure of their program, but it can't wipe clean the knowledge the Iranians have gained. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and there's no way to stuff him back in. |
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