A Washington-based think tank says Iran could probably build a working atom bomb with the outside world only having “less than” two months warning of what the Islamic Republic was up to a very short time to be able to mobilize world opinion to try to stop Iran.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in a report January 8 that it would likely take Iran six months from the date it decides to go nuclear before it got one bomb in hand. But the group said Iran could probably do four months’ work in secret with no one knowing what it was doing.
After four months, it would have to start enriching the uranium it has on hand already enriched to 60 percent up to 90 percent, the enrichment level considered ideal for weapons, though the first American bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 used uranium enriched to just above 80 percent. That would likely give the outside world “less than two months” in which to decide what to do.
The ISIS report said:
“The unfortunate reality is that Iran already knows how to build nuclear weapons, although there are some unfinished tasks related to the actual construction of them. If the regime’s leadership decided to build them, how would it proceed? How long would it take?
”The long pole in the tent of building nuclear weapons is essentially complete. Iran can quickly make enough weapon-grade uranium for many nuclear weapons, something it could not do in 2003. Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon. It could have enough weapon-grade uranium for six weapons in one month, and after five months of producing weapon-grade uranium, it could have enough for twelve.
“The other major poles in the tent are ‘nuclear weaponization’ and delivery.”
However, Iran doesn’t yet have a missile capable of reaching the United States. It is believed to be able to hit Israel and the Balkans. It also doesn’t yet have a missile with a large payload, so it would have to build a small bomb. But the report said the Islamic Republic likely would be satisfied to build a crude bomb as proof of its mastery, even if it could not deliver that bomb.
The report continued: “Weaponization is the pole that needs more work. It involves theoretical calculations and simulations; development, testing, and construction of the other components of the nuclear weapon; the conversion of weapon-grade uranium into metallic components; the integration of all the components into a nuclear weapon; and the preparation for mounting the weapons on aircraft or missiles or for use in a full-scale underground test. This pole includes the mastery of the high explosive triggering system, the molding and machining of high explosives, and the building of a neutron initiator that starts the chain reaction at just the right moment to create a nuclear explosion,” the report said.
It then went on to address the time needed to do these things.
“The accelerated program can be accomplished in a matter of six months and would involve activities conducted in far smaller, more disguisable facilities. This path is a more assured way for Iran to establish itself as a nuclear weapons power while leaving little time for the international community to react. It is also the path followed by other programs such as Pakistan’s successful effort in the early 1980s and Iraq’s in 1990, the latter thwarted by war….
“An Iranian accelerated program would not aim to produce warheads for ballistic missiles, a task that could take significantly longer than six months. Nonetheless, a crude nuclear weapon would signal Iran’s entry into the nuclear weapons club as the tenth member, either dramatically via an underground nuclear test or stealthily via leaks about its accomplishment. A missile-deliverable warhead would probably be the next goal of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The outside world would be left to ponder how soon it could reach this capability.”
But the report then said the outside world will not likely have six months’ notice of what Iran is up to.
“Western intelligence agencies may not detect the start of Iran’s nuclear weaponization effort. Given all the complexities and conflicts in the Middle East today, Western intelligence agencies, including Israel’s, are stretched to the limit. The beginning stages of a quiet, low-level effort to build nuclear weapons could slip through unobserved.
“What that means is that Iran may have a six-month timeline, but the United States and its allies may have to react to a much shorter one. Because Iran has achieved very short breakout timelines to produce weapon-grade uranium, it could wait until month four of the six-month timeline to divert its enriched uranium from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, a step likely to be detected by inspectors, although Iran may delay the diversion’s detection by a few weeks by denying inspectors access to the safeguarded sites storing the enriched uranium and containing the centrifuges to be used to take the enriched uranium up to weapon-grade, falsely declaring a fire, an accident, or a security incident. The result is that instead of a six-month warning, Western intelligence agencies may have less than two months to respond.”
Still, the report concludes the product available at the end of this timeline would not be deliverable, would not be an immediate threat to anyone, not even Israel, as the world would have some time to act before the Islamic Republic was able to put a nuclear warhead atop a missile.
