Israel Matzav: So much for 'negotiations': As Obama pushes to delay sanctions, experts say Iran could build a nuke within a month

Friday, October 25, 2013

So much for 'negotiations': As Obama pushes to delay sanctions, experts say Iran could build a nuke within a month

Greetings from 39,000 feet above the eastern seaboard of the United States. Isn't technology great?

I am currently flying from Miami (to which I drove at 5:00 am) to Newark, where I will be spending the Sabbath in the town in which I lived for my last eight years in the US....

USA Today reported on Thursday that the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) estimates that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon within a month. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is pushing the US Senate to delay further sanctions against Iran in the hope of 'improving the atmosphere' for 'negotiations.'

"Shortening breakout times have implications for any negotiation with Iran," stated the report by the Institute for Science and International Security. "An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further."

David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said the estimate means that Iran would have to eliminate more than half of its 19,000 centrifuges to extend the time it would take to build a bomb to six months.

But the Obama administration - as usual - believes that it knows better than the experts.

The Obama administration has said Iran is probably a year away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.

Bernadette Meehan, an NSC spokeswoman for President Obama's National Security Council, said the intelligence community maintains "a number of assessments" regarding potential time frames for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon or a testable nuclear device.

"We continue to closely monitor the Iranian nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium," Meehan said.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to hide its activities from UN inspectors, refusing to grant them access to suspected nuclear facilities. Shouldn't that be a reason to assume the worst?

However, Iran has blocked international inspectors from some suspected nuclear facilities to verify they are being used for peaceful purposes, access required under international agreements it has signed.

United Nations inspectors have found evidence of a weapons program in violation of Iran's commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented crippling economic sanctions on Iran to sway it to take steps to assure the world it is not developing a bomb.

And Iran doesn't really need a whole lot of centrifuges to produce a bomb either.

If Iran moves ahead with installation of its more efficient, second generation centrifuges, it would be able to produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb with so few of them, between 2,000 and 3,300 centrifuges, that they could fit in a small warehouse, Albright said.

Take your pick, either the Obama administration is complicit in Iran's efforts to produce nuclear weapons, or it's indifferent, or it's burying its head in the sand. And Israel is supposed to trust them?

Israel has to act, and the sooner the better.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, centrifuges, enriched uranium, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, ISIS, Israeli attack on Iran, Mark Kirk, United States Senate