"phil hunt" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
. ..
On 10 Jul 2003 05:26:44 -0700, Tom Cooper wrote:

I pointed at the fact that many here - and obviously this includes you
too - think that "striking Bushehr = ending eventual Iranian projects
on the topic of nuclear weapons"

But doesn't Iran need Bushehr to produce plutonium? Without it, they
lose the cabability fro a hime-produced bomb, don't they? (Although
I suppose they might be able to buy fissile material from another
country.)

_That_ is the point: it does not.

The reactors at Bushehr stand in no connection to any kind of eventual
Iranian capability to produce plutonium: they will be (or already are)
perfectly capable to do so without the facilities at Bushehr.

LWRs are not ideal for that task any way, as their plutonium-output is too
slow: on the contrary, MTRs and gas-centrifuges are. But, the Iranians do
not have any MTRs, and their centrifuges are somewhere else but in Bushehr.
All that is left that they need is the source: given that they opened their
first Uranium mine earlier this year, this question was obviously solved.

One of the basic lessons from what happend to the Iraqis at Tuweitha, on 30
September 1980, and 7 June 1981 was: do not concentrate all your facilities
at one place.

Given that the Iranians were one of the parties that destroyed Tuweitha, and
that they have certainly learned that lesson, I wonder how can anybody
believe that - after the Iraqis attacked the place for seven times, between
1984 and 1988 - the Iranians would "nevertheless" concentrate all their
nuclear-research facilities (and especially those directly connected to
eventual work on nuclear weapons) at one place, and that again in Bushehr?


Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq; War in the Air, 1980-1988
http://www.schifferbooks.com/militar...764316699.html

Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585