Iran nuclear deal

I thought that I would begin this thread by posting this article on the prospects that Iran has already made the deal irrelevant.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/11/ir ... h-too-far/

Since this is published in an open source, it is certain that President Trump and his advisers have been well aware of it.

Ah, yes, Iran made the deal "irrelevant" a year after the US abandoned it. Quite dastardly of those Persians.

Well, it would probably took about a year before Iran would have enough fissionable materials for a bomb. From that, it would probably took several years before they would manage to make bomb compact enough to fit the missile warhead.

P.S. Must point out, that Iran may not need those several years after, if they push for gun-type bomb. Everything currently known about Iranian nuclear program is centered around enriched uranium - not plutonium - which made possible rather compact (albeit low-efficiency) devices.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I thought that I would begin this thread by posting this article on the prospects that Iran has already made the deal irrelevant.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/11/ir ... h-too-far/

Since this is published in an open source, it is certain that President Trump and his advisers have been well aware of it.

As pointed out, no.

Trump violated the deal, *then* as allowed under the terms of the deal the Iranians announced they were no longer abiding by restrictions which they no longer needed to thanks to Trump.

He did this.

But you did get one thing right, Trump and his advisers almost certainly have to be aware of what they themselves did.

gcomeau wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I thought that I would begin this thread by posting this article on the prospects that Iran has already made the deal irrelevant.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/11/ir ... h-too-far/

Since this is published in an open source, it is certain that President Trump and his advisers have been well aware of it.

As pointed out, no.

Trump violated the deal, *then* as allowed under the terms of the deal the Iranians announced they were no longer abiding by restrictions which they no longer needed to thanks to Trump.

He did this.

But you did get one thing right, Trump and his advisers almost certainly have to be aware of what they themselves did.

Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding. Iran was effectively circumventing the nuclear deal since it first went into effect by developing the new centrifuges and building the facilities to mass produce them.

"Meanwhile, for the last 12 years, including after it signed the nuclear agreement, Iran has been developing the IR-4 centrifuge, which has four to five times the enrichment capacity as the IR-1. On Jan. 30, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the AEOI, declared in a television interview with Iran’s Channel 2 that Iran’s testing of the IR-4 centrifuge had been completed and that Iran could “easily manufacture them on an industrial scale.” It is also working on the IR-6, which may have up to 10 times the enrichment capacity of the IR-1, and the IR-8, which has about 20 times the enrichment capacity, according to the AEOI. On April 10, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani even announced the installation of a cascade of 20 IR-6 centrifuges at the enrichment facility at Natanz. Salehi boasted that Iran’s effort to develop these higher-capacity centrifuge models for mass production had advanced unimpeded by the nuclear deal, which had banned building them but not the capacity to mass produce them.

Under the pre-JCPOA countdown clock, assuming no secret programs or outside help, Iran would now be one year away from breakout point and about one and a half years away from a deliverable nuclear weapon. But given the advances of Iran’s nuclear program under the JCPOA, Iran’s breakout could now be only four months—or less, if a few thousand of its more sophisticated centrifuges are brought online. In this case, Iran’s time to a deployable nuclear weapon could be six months or less."

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

gcomeau wrote:As pointed out, no.

Trump violated the deal, *then* as allowed under the terms of the deal the Iranians announced they were no longer abiding by restrictions which they no longer needed to thanks to Trump.

He did this.

But you did get one thing right, Trump and his advisers almost certainly have to be aware of what they themselves did.

Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding. Iran was effectively circumventing the nuclear deal since it first went into effect by developing the new centrifuges and building the facilities to mass produce them.

That is not circumventing the deal. That was permitted under the deal.

Maybe one of us does need to work on their reading comprehension, since it says that right in your article.

What the deal kept a lock on was the actual enrichment of the uranium. Which they *were* abiding by until Trump blew up the entire arrangement.

WITH DEAL: They can play with their tech but can't enrich uranium past a certain point. The deal even made them SHIP OUT uranium they already had that was in excess of the allowed amounts.

WITHOUT DEAL: Remove restriction on enriching uranium.


If you can explain how the latter situation is preferable to the former, have at it.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding. Iran was effectively circumventing the nuclear deal since it first went into effect by developing the new centrifuges and building the facilities to mass produce them.

"Meanwhile, for the last 12 years, including after it signed the nuclear agreement, Iran has been developing the IR-4 centrifuge, which has four to five times the enrichment capacity as the IR-1. On Jan. 30, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the AEOI, declared in a television interview with Iran’s Channel 2 that Iran’s testing of the IR-4 centrifuge had been completed and that Iran could “easily manufacture them on an industrial scale.” It is also working on the IR-6, which may have up to 10 times the enrichment capacity of the IR-1, and the IR-8, which has about 20 times the enrichment capacity, according to the AEOI. On April 10, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani even announced the installation of a cascade of 20 IR-6 centrifuges at the enrichment facility at Natanz. Salehi boasted that Iran’s effort to develop these higher-capacity centrifuge models for mass production had advanced unimpeded by the nuclear deal, which had banned building them but not the capacity to mass produce them.

Under the pre-JCPOA countdown clock, assuming no secret programs or outside help, Iran would now be one year away from breakout point and about one and a half years away from a deliverable nuclear weapon. But given the advances of Iran’s nuclear program under the JCPOA, Iran’s breakout could now be only four months—or less, if a few thousand of its more sophisticated centrifuges are brought online. In this case, Iran’s time to a deployable nuclear weapon could be six months or less."

I find it interesting that the article goes fails to mention that JCPOA was effectively dead for most, if not all, of the concrete dates it mentions.

Dilandu wrote:Well, it would probably took about a year before Iran would have enough fissionable materials for a bomb. From that, it would probably took several years before they would manage to make bomb compact enough to fit the missile warhead.

P.S. Must point out, that Iran may not need those several years after, if they push for gun-type bomb. Everything currently known about Iranian nuclear program is centered around enriched uranium - not plutonium - which made possible rather compact (albeit low-efficiency) devices.

Its possible to get a 40Kt yield Gun-Type Boosted Fission Warhead down to about 2-300lbs ... using 1960's technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W33_(nuclear_warhead)
Iran has plenty of delivery devices that size.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace ... 00_km_plus)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_(missile)

Dilandu wrote:Well, it would probably took about a year before Iran would have enough fissionable materials for a bomb. From that, it would probably took several years before they would manage to make bomb compact enough to fit the missile warhead.

P.S. Must point out, that Iran may not need those several years after, if they push for gun-type bomb. Everything currently known about Iranian nuclear program is centered around enriched uranium - not plutonium - which made possible rather compact (albeit low-efficiency) devices.

I remain amazed that people continue to presume that building a nuclear weapon is a sequential process in which the entire quantify of required Uranium is enriched to fissile grade then and only then is the actual bomb is designed. The US parallel processed multiple bomb designs simultaneously with Plutonium breeding and multiple Uranium enrichment processes. I do not expect Iran to have such capability. However; given modern computing capabilities it is easy for them to design a nuclear weapon and fabricate all components except fissile cores years before they enrich to fissile grade.

As to the question of gun assembly verses imploosion detonation, the presumed increased difficulty is overstated. The US first used gun assembly with Uranium and implosion with Plutonium because Pu-239 is invariably contaminated with Pu-240 which has a high rate of spontaneous fission. Building an implosion type weapon for Plutonium, especially Plutonium that has been irradiated for weeks rather than days is difficult. Building an imploosion type weapon for fissile grade Uranium is much, much easier.

The bottom line is that the Iranians can have an operational nuke within a few days of obtaining sufficient fissile grade Uranium.