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January 06, 2006
Off The Shelf Nukes?
There's a truly disturbing post up over at Regime Change Iraq (via Elephants In Academia and Dr. Sanity).
According to the post, Iran is already in possession of four nuclear weapons, obtained from Ukraine.
Back in 1991/1992 three nuclear weapon devices the Mullahs had obtained from Kazakhstan were verified on ground in Iran and intelligence further estimates that Iran has totally between eight to 12 nuclear devices from the Soviet era.
The press leaks pointed to Iran possibly not proceeding with negotiations, reassuring internal supporters and preparing to confront the West. The final decision to disdain the European meeting was apparently made with the sudden incapacitation of Israel's Ariel Sharon.
I hope this turn out to be unsubstantiated, but if it's true there are two things that worry me beyond the obvious:
1) If they're off-the-shelf nukes that are even remotely modern, they could very easily be thermonuclear--that is, hydrogen bombs.
2) Along the same lines, they could also be miniaturized and ready for installation on a missile. Everyone's been talking about a "native" Iranian bomb and the possibility of the weapon being used on an Iranian missile, but according to my understanding, once a country has a workable nuke, it takes a further massive engineering effort to make the weapon small and light enough to fit on a missile. Buying an old Soviet nuke would short-circuit this time-consuming process.
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