IS IRAN JUST WEEKS AWAY FROM BEING A NUCLEAR POWER?

My friend Gary Metz – known as “Doctor Zin” – has a critically important website called
RegimeChangeIran . It’s one of To The Point’s “Liberation Links” listed in the home page left side bar.

Gary and I share the view that the greatest threat in the world right now is Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. It is of the most immediate necessity that Iran’s nuclear facilities be militarily destroyed. In this article, Gary explains why. The Bush White House, however, will do absolutely nothing that might upset the Iraq elections of January 30. The earliest Bush could authorize a strike (or give the Israelis the green light) would be in February. Cross your fingers that he does. -JW

Last month in RegimeChange Iran, I warned that Iran must shut down all of its uranium enrichment centrifuges, including the twenty “experimental” centrifuges. Why? Because Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has demanded:

“We must have two bombs ready to go in January or you are not Moslems.”

I explained that western intelligence can identify when enrichment centrifuges are running because the produce a unique “noise” or “signature.” Thus, I argued that Iran would never shut these last centrifuges down. Iran needed these last centrifuges to keep running in order to mask a “hidden” lab of centrifuges needed in order to meet this deadline.

Unfortunately, when the issue came up at the EU3/Iran negotiations, Iran “compromised” by allowing these centrifuges to continue running “empty” but under the supervision of an IAEA video camera. In other words, Iran was able to continue it’s secret program.

Now we discover that Iran is willing to violate the spirit of even this agreement with the EU3 by continuing to prepare raw uranium for enrichment. According to NY Times (Wednesday, December 22, 2004):

“The Iranians have decided to continue UF4 (uranium tetrafluoride) production until the end of February.”

UF4 is a precursor to uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the gas that is fed into centrifuges which spin at supersonic speeds to purify it for use as fuel in civilian nuclear power plants or in atomic weapons.

The IAEA, according to the Times, said the deal between the EU’s “big three” of France, Britain, and Germany, and Iran actually permitted Tehran to convert an entire batch of 37 tons of “yellowcake” (milled uranium oxide) into UF4.

Once converted into UF6 and enriched with 5% U-235 (the lightweight uranium isotope necessary for a nuclear reaction), this would yield enough bomb-grade uranium for “five nuclear weapons,” according to nuclear experts consulted by the Times – although they did not specify their destructive capacity measured in kilotonnage.

Whatever the size of the bombs, it now appears Iran may be just a matter of weeks from declaring itself a nuclear power.

Time is running out, and the CIA, the Pentagon, and the Bush White House know it. The only question now is whether or not we will act or accept the inevitable.

President Bush, faster please.