Putting the World on Notice

Worldview Item of the Day

While the rest of the world obsesses about the American presidential election and the Olympic torch relay, Iran’s president announced that his country has activated 6,000 more cascade centrifuges for the production of highly enriched uranium. This announcement brings the total number of centrifuges that Iran admits to operating to around 9,000.

As previously discussed on this weblog, only a few hundred such centrifuges are needed to produce the amount of highly enriched uranium needed to supply Iran’s domestic nuclear power plants. The centrifuges announced today represent part of Iran’s previously announced plan to produce 54,000 centrifuges.

9,000 might represent bravado on Iran’s part in its constant attempt to assert itself with the rest of the world, but it also represents what appears to me to be the inevitable march toward being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Certainly, the evidence is circumstantial, but an oil rich nation that already has the capacity to produce enough highly enriched uranium to supply its domestic needs adding to that capacity multifold fails the skepticism test every time.

In the mean time, Iran is steadily approaching the capacity to manufacture at least simplistic nuclear weapons, is developing ballistic missiles with the range to hit Europe and, eventually, the United States, and continues to defy the world with threatening rhetoric and actions. The rest of the world, however, seems unable to do anything about this threat.

The next president of the United States will have many things to deal with, and Iran will certainly be one of them. The question is whether it will be a nuclear Iran and the consequences that come with it.

-=DLH=-