re: #485 kirkspencer

Counter arguments to those that you make:

1) Iran is developing the nuclear technologies and know-how for (A) a nuclear reactor located at Natanz; and (B) its own home-grown enrichment infrastructure.

The reactor isn’t the problem; it’s the enrichment infrastructure. That enrichment infrastructure is located at multiple locations around the country, and the Iranians are purposefully hiding the facilities and locating them in underground facilities to hide them from the prying eyes of satellites. We believe that they have several thousand enrichment cascades, that when running at full operation and capabilities will produce a level of enriched uranium.

Enrichment is a time-consuming process, but once you know how to enrich to LEU (suitable for use in a nuclear reactor), it requires additional processing time to bring it up to HEU and weapons grade.

Focusing on the nuclear reactor is not the real issue here - it’s the enrichment capabilities that are the problem; and efforts to try and get the Iranians to buy LEU from Russia to fuel the Natanz reactor rather than going through their own enrichment process is where the problems lie. Iran is obfuscating and hiding their intentions for the enrichment program.

2) As for dealing with the threats towards Israel, note that the Iranians aren’t just posing a nuclear threat towards Israel, but to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority countries in the region. Saudi Arabia has indicated that if Iran tests a nuclear device, they’ll go nuclear themselves (with Pakistani assistance at that). Israel is the bogeyman for Iran, but hardly the only one or even the biggest fish to fry.

That also doesn’t get into whether Ahmadinejad or Khameni ascribe to Twelver theology and the need for a conflict to bring about the revelation of the Mahdi - and whether the martrydom of millions of Iranians would be acceptable to achieve that goal.