World Watch Focus: And Then There Is Iran

20060412

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     While the world remains distracted by many pressing concerns, and while the UN Security Council continues to dicker with the exact text of ongoing censures and demands for compliance, Iran boldly announced that it has reached industrial production of enriched uranium via the centrifuging of uranium hexafluoride gas. Iran currently has 164 centrifuges, required, and Iran’s president has vowed to increase that number as high as 54,000.

     In small quantities, enriched uranium is used to make nuclear power reactors more efficient. Such efficiency requires at most a few hundred centrifuges for the number of power producing reactors that Iran currently has. Nuclear weapons production, on the other hand, requires tens of thousands of centrifuges to produce enough enriched uranium to build effective bombs.

     Therein lies one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in the accusation that Iran is intent on building a nuclear weapon. No nation needs 54,000 uranium hexafluoride centrifuges unless it intends to build such weapons. The intention to build such weapons defies all of Iran’s international commitments and previous statements.

     The truth is that building a nuclear weapon fits directly into Iran’s plan to make itself into the center of an expanding, centralized Islamic state. Using the threat of nuclear annihilation, Iran could unite the Muslim world against Israel and the West, giving them the political and military might to forward their radical agenda.

     There is no need to belabor the point of whether Iran seeks to build a nuclear weapon because the evidence speaks for itself. The Western, especially the American, response, however, deserves a great deal of scrutiny and discussion. It is unconscionable that the West is essentially allowing Iran to have its way and build a weapon that the same West knows will be used to threaten it and its allies.

     While the West debates about the nature of censures, argues about whether to even talk about use of military force, and continues to turn its attention from Iran to other, typically domestic, issues, Iran moves full force toward the development and fielding of a nuclear weapon.

     The consequences of successful development of such a weapon will be dire for the entire world. It is hard to imagine a circumstance where such a weapon, once in the possession of Iran, will not be used by Iran or one of its proxies. How will the world respond then? The question is almost irrelevant because the cause was preventable.

     In the end, this debate is running out of time. Israeli intelligence publicly acknowledges that, at the current rate of development, Iran could produce a functional weapon by 2009. By 2010, Iran could have tens or dozens of warheads, mounted on intermediate range missiles, bombers, and warships ready to threaten its neighbors and the world. This threat will materialize in this decade, and once it does, the option to prevent such a threat is gone.

DLH