U.S. intelligence officials have told President Bush news that has left him stunned: Iran has completed all of the elements required for an atomic bomb. The intelligence information asserted that North Korea this year transferred components to Iran to assemble a plutonium-based nuclear warhead. The components were believed to have originated in Pakistan.The new Axis of Evil Schizophrenics
The development suggests Iran now has the capability to launch a missile tipped with a nuclear warhead.
That will put Israel on a hair trigger. The distances between Iran and Israel are too short. Israel has to assume a nuclear attack if they detect an MMM (Mad Mullah Missile).
| I'd be careful with the weather balloons around there ... |
| The data we have on Iran's nuclear program shouldn't be that fragile. If it is, we're doing something seriously wrong, which would probably be relying too much on HUMINT. |
They went down several routes, including the Kahn™ turnkey route, IMHO.
Instead, the entire Iranian uranium enrichment effort appears to have concealed a much more immediate aim. The clerical regime in Teheran did not plan to wait several years for a nuclear option and obtained plutonium and components from North Korea. In late 2004, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps tested a command and control network that would permit a nuclear weapons warhead to be placed on an enhanced Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile. How many nuclear warheads could Iran produce immediately? The CIA has learned that Iran could assemble several nuclear warheads for the Shihab-3 arsenal. This means that U.S. forces in Iraq and southern Europe are under immediate Iranian threat. Israel and Saudi Arabia are already under Iranian nuclear threat.
Everyone is under the threat, including the EUniks, welcome to the club.
In 1994, the CIA obtained the first reports of Iran obtaining plutonium components from North Korea. But the latest information comes from a new and far more reliable source. Intelligence sources won't elaborate, but stress that the source is from a "hostile" state, a reference to either Iran or North Korea.
Maybe a Nork or even an Iranian mole?