What If Iran Embraces Nuclear Ambiguity?

Israeli defense officials are concerned that Iran will adopt the Israeli policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Iran has mastered the fuel enrichment stage of its nuclear program and has proven its ability to enrich uranium to as high as 20 percent. General assessments are that if it so decides, it would take Iran just a number of months for it to enrich a sufficient quantity of uranium to over the 90% that would be required for one nuclear device.

Another alarming element for Israel is Iran’s announcement last month that it is moving a cascade of advanced centrifuges to the Fordo facility dug inside a mountain near Qom that Barak said in 2009 was immune to standard air strikes.

The current assessment in Israel is that Iran is working to accumulate a large quantity of low-enriched uranium that will enable it at a later stage to reprocess the material and enrich a larger quantity to higher levels and manufacture a number of nuclear devices.

“Iran very well could continue on its current course for a while, during which it continues to enrich uranium like it is today but without going to the breakout stage and publicly making a nuclear weapon,” the senior official said.

If that were to happen, the concern in Israel is that Iran would not immediately declare that it has developed a nuclear device – assuming that it did so without expelling international inspectors from Natanz – to avoid providing the world with the justification to either increase sanctions or to use military action to stop it.

At some point, if the United States will not take out Iran's nuclear capability, Israel will have to do so. The longer this game of 'chicken' keeps going on, the less likely Israel is to succeed, and the more likely that the attempt to take Iran's nuclear capability out will be more painful. Stuxnet and blowing up nuclear scientists are short-term setbacks that do not keep Iran from its long-term goal. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we will have to bite the bullet and do the job ourselves.

Labels: IAF, Iranian nuclear program, Iranian nuclear threat, Natanz

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:51 AM