The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response. The dossier, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program", is drawn in part from reports submitted to it by western intelligence agencies.
| Don't worry, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate told us that Iran had stopped its nuclear weaponization efforts in 2003, so none of this can be true. |
| Translation: "From whom did you purchase your expertise?" Not that the sellers will be punished in any way, per Dr. El Baradei's personal tradition. |
James Acton, a British nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "It's remarkable that, before perfecting step one, they are going straight to step four or five ... To start with more sophisticated designs speaks of level of technical ambition that is surprising."
| The Iranians have a limited amount of time. Either the Israelis are going to whack them, the Western world will find a spine, or Khamenei and the rest of the Mad Mullahs™ grow old and die. So it's off to step five as quick as they can. |
| The Iranians are not stupid. They understand that a two-point implosion device is possible. The theory is known. The end-result is known. The rest is a matter of engineering. |
| Nonetheless, why keep your own engineers from working on something else, eg. a beautiful plaque saying "Property of the University of Tehran", when the manufacturing process can be purchased turnkey from North Korea or China? |
| Haven't you heard? Tehran University plans to get its electrical power from a linked series of nuclear explosions, rather like a car is powered a multiple cylinder engine. |
| Of course they think that. The U of T physics professors have not yet published their results. |
| Another option, I s'pose. |
| Perhaps one of the most blatant political documents of our time, designed to freeze the Bush administration. It worked. Now we pay the price, but the authors of that NIE piece are on to other things. That should worry us. |
| Nah, the cleverboots at the CIA knew all about the U of T project. Who d'you think wrote up the results? |
In September, a German court found a German-Iranian businessman, Mohsen Vanaki, guilty of brokering the sale of dual-use equipment with possible applications in developing nuclear weapons. The equipment included specialised high-speed cameras, of the sort used to develop implosion devices, as well as radiation detectors. According to a report by the Institute for Science and International Security, the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, testified at the trial that there was evidence that Iran's weapons development was continuing.
The IAEA is seeking to find out what the scientists and the institutions involved in the experiments are doing now, but has so far not been given a response. The agency's repeated requests to interview Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose name features heavily in the IAEA's documentation and who is widely seen as the father of the Iranian nuclear programme, have been turned down.
The agency has also asked Iran to explain evidence that a Russian weapons expert helped Iranian technicians to master synchronised high-explosive detonations.
The first implosion devices, like the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, used 32 high-explosive hexagons and pentagons arrayed around a plutonium core like the panels of a football. The IAEA has a five-page document describing experimentation on such a hemispherical array of explosives.
According to a diplomat familiar with the IAEA documentation, the evidence also points to experiments with a two-point detonation system that represents "a more elegant solution" to the challenges of making a nuclear warhead, but it is much harder to achieve. It is used in conjunction with a non-spherical pit, in the shape of a rugby ball, or explosives in that shape wrapped around a spherical pit, and it works by compressing the pit from both ends.The IAEA has expressed "serious concern" about Iran's failure to give an account of the research its scientists have carried out.
Descriptions of "two-point implosion" warheads designs have occasionally appeared in the public domain (there are extensive descriptions on Wikipedia) and they were first developed by US scientists in the 1950s, but it remains an offence for American officials or even non-governmental nuclear experts with security clearance to discuss them.