Friday, November 11, 2011

More Analysis on Whether Israel Would Attack Iran

This article seems to sum up pretty good the arguments for and against a military strike against Iran. The final paragraph, in particular, points out various factors supporting a strike. However, one part struck me in particular:
Western intelligence sources believe that Iran now has enough highly enriched uranium to build, should it choose to do so, at least one nuclear weapon within a year and that this could be rapidly followed by several more. It is less clear whether Iran is capable of putting a miniaturised warhead on one of its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, which have a range of 1,200 miles (1,900 km), but the IAEA suggests it has conducted experiments to that end.
In other words, if I'm reading this right, Iran has enough fuel to build a weapon sometime in the future, but not one that would work (i.e., because it is too big) with Iran's only viable delivery system. Having the bomb, and being able to deliver the bomb to a target are two different matters. If Iran can't deliver the bomb (other than smuggling it in a ship), then its program may not currently pose enough of an existential threat to force Israel's hand. Either way, we should see this fall out one way or another very soon.

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