Monday, April 09, 2007

More Nuclear Estimates   [Stanley Kurtz]

Bloomberg news has the following estimate on the timing of an Iranian nuclear device: "About 1,500 centrifuges spinning non-stop for a year would be needed to produce the 28 kilograms (62 pounds) of 90 percent-enriched uranium needed for a bomb, said nuclear physicist David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington." That seems broadly consistent with the earlier reports from Reuters and ABC, which seem to put Iran a year or two away from a bomb.

But then the Bloomberg story quotes another expert: "Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the Iranians, ‘have passed some kind of threshold,’ adding that they may be exaggerating their nuclear success. In January, the institute said the Islamic republic was still two to three years away from building a nuclear weapon."

The second expert has a point. It is Iran’s interest to exaggerate its progress, so as to achieve status as a power that prudent states must regard as nuclear. What’s interesting is that even the more cautious estimate of Iran’s nuclear progress is only "two to three years away." That still matches up pretty well with the ABC estimate of 2009. So it seems as if the sources so far are agreeing on a range that is somewhere between one-and-a-half to three years from now. That continues to imply that in the year following the election, we are going to be facing a nuclear Iran. It also points up the fact that we have already passed into a vague region where Iran is even closer to gaining a kind of de facto nuclear status, for powers that wish to tread carefully.

04/09 01:08 PMShare