By Steve Hynd
The NY Time's Broad, Mazzetti and Sanger - the gruesome threesome of Bush-era officially unofficial leaks designed to hype up fear against Iran - are still in business and still failing to fact-check their pieces. In their article yesterday asking if Iran was designing warheads, they wrote:
The Israelis, who have delivered veiled threats of a military strike, say they believe that Iran has restarted these �weaponization� efforts, which would mark a final step in building a nuclear weapon. The Germans say they believe that the weapons work was never halted.
...German intelligence officials take an even harder line against Iran. They say the weapons work never stopped, a judgment made public last year in a German court case involving shipments of banned technology to Tehran. In recent interviews, German intelligence agencies declined to comment further.
The thrust is obvious - "it's not just Israeli paranoia". But Bernhard of the sadly-defunct Moon Of Alabama blog emails from Germany to tell me that Sanger et al's thrust is false.
There were reports back in July that the German secret service BND had said something like the above. In July there was a piece in the German weekly magazine Stern and the WSJ printed an opinion piece by one Bruno Schirra (who is know as not-so-reliable in Germany): Germany's Spies Refuted the 2007 NIE Report.
The BND refuted the Stern piece: Germany's BND denies report on Iran bomb timing.
[A] BND spokesman said the article did not reflect the view of the agency, which is that Iran would not be able to produce an atomic bomb for years. "We are talking about several years not several months," the spokesman said.
The German NPT and arms control guru Oliver Meier took the WSJ opinion piece apart: Iran Weaponization Intel: A Cautionary Note.
Schirra uses the Court�s 30-page legal opinion and a press release by the Court to claim that the BND �has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003.� However, the information publicly available about the Court�s ruling does not support such a broad claim.
A week ago the head of the BND, Ernst Uhrlau, was on public TV here. Ernst Uhrlau im PHOENIX-Kamingespr�.
Des weiteren widerspricht Ernst Uhrlau einem Stern-Bericht, demzufolge der Iran kurz vor dem Bau einer Uran-Bombe stehe: "Dieses Zitat deckt nicht die Aussage des BND (�), denn der Iran ist nicht in der Lage innerhalb eines halben Jahres nuklearf�g zu sein." Es gehe dem Iran auch nicht darum, ob "er innerhalb von einem, zwei, drei oder vier Jahren eine nukleare Schlagf�gkeit" erreichen k�. Der Iran ziele darauf ab, "durch die Beherrschung des doppelten Brennstoffkreislaufes die F�gkeit zu erwerben, zu entscheiden, wann eine Nuklearwaffe f� Iran Sinn macht oder nicht."
My rough translation.
Urlau refuted a Stern report which said Iran was a short time before building a Uranium bomb."That quote does not fit the statements of the BND (...) because it is impossible that Iran can have nuclear weapon capability within a half year." It would not be Iran's point "to reach nuclear weapon capability in two, three or four years". Iran is aiming "mastering the nuclear fuel cycle and gaining the ability to decide when and if a nuclear weapon makes sense for them or not."
The BND says that Iran's (civil) nuclear program continues. It never claimed that a Iranian nuclear weapon program exists or continues. So the BND has multiple times denied what the NYT says it has claimed.
Despite the gruesome threesome's efforts to muddy the water, the 2007 NIE on Iran's nuclear ambitions still stands.
The Federation of American Scientists today runs through what's possible at the new site, and goes a long way to debunking the fearmongering and war hyping.
Aside from what is possible in theory, certain things make economic sense and others don�t. To enrich enough LEU for an average 1000 MWe reactor, you need 135,600 kg-SWU/yr. If the 3,000 machines are IR-1s with a separative capacity of 0.5 kg SWU/yr, it would take them about 90 years to get one year�s fuel load. This of course makes no sense. However, if they want to get one bomb�s worth of HEU (from natural uranium), they need 6,320 kg SWU/yr and this would take you a little over 4 years. All of these examples can be worked through with FAS� new and improved uranium enrichment calculator.
The third option is to take LEU from Natanz and enrich it to a bomb�s worth of HEU. This would take about a year, depending on how much material they are willing to waste. So, if they are trying to divert LEU from an existing facility such as the one at Natanz, the numbers add up perfectly (almost too perfectly). However, diversion of nuclear material from the enrichment plant at Natanz or the conversion plant at Isfahan is near impossible to go undetected if the facilities are under IAEA safeguards. Although uranium mines and mills are not under safeguards, so far there is no sign of a clandestine conversion plant in Iran. There is always the option that the Iranians could just kick the inspectors out and have breakout in one year or less.
On the other hand, Iran hasn�t claimed that the centrifuge plant at Qom is an industrial facility, but a �semi-industrial-scale plant� or a �pilot plant�. If they are planning on testing a handful of new machines (like at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz) or having a set up of centrifuges someplace where an Israeli air raid will not have much effect, to retain enrichment capability and rebuild their industry, this may make more sense.
That last, of course, is exactly what Iran says it is doing.
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