Ghost Patrol
Incognito Moderatore
- Sep 17, 2019
- 25,300
- 39,177
- AFL Club
- Richmond
- Moderator
- #2,526
I would be surprised if Iran's Nuclear facilities are still in one piece by the end of the month.
Whatever Biden has been reported to have said previously, I wouldn't bank on that being an indication of what happens next.
'Tehran ‘could have nuclear bomb in six months’: former IAEA director'
Larisa Brown and Samer Al-Atrush
1 hours ago
Iran could be six months away from having ten nuclear warheads ready to fire, an official observer who has visited the regime’s sites has reported.
Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who oversaw its efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program, said the country could have the arsenal ready by April if it “rushed”.
The Finnish adviser said: “You cannot wipe out a country with those missiles but you can threaten it and be in a stronger position in negotiations.”
Officially, Iran claims that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes but Israel and many in the West see it as a front for weapons development.
An IAEA report in August said Iran had increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent to almost 165kg, 20kg more than the UN’s nuclear watchdog reported in May.
Enrichment of about 90 per cent is required for a bomb. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, has long warned that Iran could achieve that in a few months.
Heinonen, a fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington DC, who has held many meetings with the regime’s nuclear officials, said the missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday night could be used to deliver nuclear weapons.
“You just put something different where the payload is and design the weapons package differently so it survives the flight,” he said. “That is why the US and UK are worried.”
He warned that officials in Iran had signalled that they had changed their defence doctrine to suggest the weapons could be used “if we don’t get what we want”.
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President Biden has said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. He is the only one likely to have any sway over what Netanyahu does next.
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Israeli hawks could urge Netanyahu to strike as Israel did previously in Iraq and Syria by bombing their nuclear facilities.
Analysts say hitting Iran’s enrichment facilities in mountainous regions of Natanz and Fordow could be “challenging” and have limited results.
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The Times'
We have been hearing this same ‘within months’ story for many years now.