Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Fri 05/12/2006 View Thu 05/11/2006 View Wed 05/10/2006 View Tue 05/09/2006 View Mon 05/08/2006 View Sun 05/07/2006 View Sat 05/06/2006
1
2006-05-12 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Highly Enriched Uranium Reportedly Found in Iran
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by Anonymoose 2006-05-12 10:21|| || Front Page|| [11129 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 The U.N. atomic agency has found traces of highly enriched uranium


!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Liberalhawk 2006-05-12 10:27||   2006-05-12 10:27|| Front Page Top

#2 Ancient news.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-05-12 10:29||   2006-05-12 10:29|| Front Page Top

#3 What the hell is the the U.N. atomic agency?
Posted by Mike N. 2006-05-12 10:33||   2006-05-12 10:33|| Front Page Top

#4 What the hell is the the U.N. atomic agency?
A BUNCH OF DIPSHITS!!!!
Posted by ARMYGUY 2006-05-12 10:36||   2006-05-12 10:36|| Front Page Top

#5 probably the IAEA
Posted by Liberalhawk 2006-05-12 10:39||   2006-05-12 10:39|| Front Page Top

#6 Dude ... it was ... like ... for personal use ... totally!
Posted by DarthVader 2006-05-12 10:59||   2006-05-12 10:59|| Front Page Top

#7 Bulls*%t!!!!!!!
They said they only want it for peaceful purposes. They are Muslims. They would not lie.
Posted by plainslow 2006-05-12 11:02||   2006-05-12 11:02|| Front Page Top

#8 If a little enrichment is good......
Posted by Snoluth Glumble7467 2006-05-12 11:05||   2006-05-12 11:05|| Front Page Top

#9 I blame Bush.




I don't know why or for what.
Posted by bigjim-ky 2006-05-12 11:05||   2006-05-12 11:05|| Front Page Top

#10 "The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential information..."

I heard it from a friend who'ooo'ooo...heard it from a friend who'ooo'ooo...heard it from another you been messin' arouu'ound...
Posted by DepotGuy 2006-05-12 11:09||   2006-05-12 11:09|| Front Page Top

#11 well Iranians jumped up and down on national TV with vials of the stuff it aint no secret

having said that this kind of story is exactly the problem with the public relations campaign of the administration, hope they don't fall for it again.

You don't argue to go to war because you might find wmd/enriched uranium - because if you don't that gives your opponents a chance to shout 'liar'.

You argue to go to war because the opposition will sooner or later get some and they will be a threat. And they will. Remove the regime before they get the stuff. and advertise as such, don't leave an opening for the enemy PR machine.
Posted by anon1 2006-05-12 11:10||   2006-05-12 11:10|| Front Page Top

#12 "well Iranians jumped up and down on national TV with vials of the stuff it aint no secret"

Not exactly. Enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium are two very different things.

What the Iranians claimed to have achieved was enriched uranium-- uranium in which the level of U-235 isotope (the active stuff) has been increased from its natural level of 0.7% up to between 3% and 5%, making it usable as fuel in a power-producing nuclear reactor.

What this article is saying is that the IAEA found traces of highly enriched uranium-- bomb-grade material enriched to between 85% and 95% U-235.

You can make a nuclear reactor using enriched uranium, but not a bomb; for that, you need highly enriched uranium-- and making bombs is the only use for HEU.

If true, this is a pretty disturbing development.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D.  2006-05-12 11:42||   2006-05-12 11:42|| Front Page Top

#13 question

Note the Iranians will claim this is contamination on equipment from Pakistan. But its STILL incriminating cause it was found in a place what wast supposed to have ANY enrichment equipment, IIUC. And it was a Defense Ministry site.
Posted by Liberalhawk 2006-05-12 11:54||   2006-05-12 11:54|| Front Page Top

#14 What happened to the price of oil after releasiing that story?
The more the oil market reacts to these types of stories, the more of them we are going to see.
Posted by TMH 2006-05-12 11:54||   2006-05-12 11:54|| Front Page Top

#15 I would be surprised if the iranians don't already have enough HEU for a few bombs made by thousands of centrifuges humming away while the USA fiddled with one finger up its ass.
Posted by ed 2006-05-12 12:17||   2006-05-12 12:17|| Front Page Top

#16 Your right TMH. All they have to do is rattle the sabres. Won't even have to fire a shot.
Posted by plainslow 2006-05-12 12:32||   2006-05-12 12:32|| Front Page Top

#17 ed, that finger happens to be the democrat party.
Posted by wxjames 2006-05-12 12:57||   2006-05-12 12:57|| Front Page Top

#18 This is far different from fuel grade.

This means they are trying to develop a bomb NOW.

Ok to all the naysayers, what do you say now that your "maybe in a decade" predictions are wrong? Lefties wanted to use this to undercut Bush and all they have done is put us ALL at risk. And what wil they say? Oops?

That doenst f*cking cut it.

NOW you know why anyone with experience (and non-left leaning politics) says we had to play this in a near-worst-case way, so we coudl be ready to move instead of being caught flat footed.

Hold the "In 10 Years" crowd accountable. THEY held us up while this was going on. Its akin to distracting the cops wile a rape is going on - they are aiding and abetting an enemy.
Posted by Oldspook 2006-05-12 14:05||   2006-05-12 14:05|| Front Page Top

#19 OS

Didnt the NIE actually say 5 to 10 years? And that was without all the new info of the last 12 months?

Yes, shame on folks still quoting the 10 years number from that, as if it was upto date info.

I hope we get a new NIE.

Meanwhile ive heard guesses from credible sources from i year, to maybe 3 to 5 years. But more probably less than 3 years.
Posted by Liberalhawk 2006-05-12 14:26||   2006-05-12 14:26|| Front Page Top

#20  I get the feeling that this probably is leftover Paki uranium and will lead to nothing in terms of getting the world to come around to the U.S. side of this.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter where or when it was found. The only thing that may help is finding enough HEU to build a bomb, and I don't expect the Iranians to make it that easy for us.
Posted by Mike N. 2006-05-12 15:11||   2006-05-12 15:11|| Front Page Top

#21 This isn't old news and I doubt it's left behind by the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis didn't provide highly enriched uranium, only plans.

This is obviously the proof that the Iranians are building a bomb, if true.
Posted by Sping Cloluger7706 2006-05-12 15:29||   2006-05-12 15:29|| Front Page Top

#22 Plutonium and other reactor-bred radioactive materials are normally traceable to the reactor that bred them via other radioactive trace elements found in the mix. Given that each ore deposit will vary somewhat in composition, is HEU traceable to the original ore deposit from whence it came? If so we should know shortly whether or not the HEU traces found in Iran are home cookin'.
Posted by AzCat 2006-05-12 15:40||   2006-05-12 15:40|| Front Page Top

#23  Spring, you're right the Paks did not provide HEU, but it does appear that they provided some equipment they had previously used to enrich uranium for themselves.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't drop about 5,000 bombs on Iran. What I am saying is that I don't expect this new finding to matter to the rest of the world.
Posted by Mike N. 2006-05-12 15:52||   2006-05-12 15:52|| Front Page Top

#24 NIE was politically influenced by hedgers.

3 years shoudl have been the "most probable" number and that number would have been used to plan and act.


Anytime you give a politician or commander a long timeline, they tend to stretch it to the furtherest end if they have wiggle room and they do not like the facts you are raising. Thats why a good analyst has to be solid with the numbers and emphasize the best ones. You canot always depend on the recipient of analysis product to properly grasp it with the context an expert would, nor can you expect politically minded people in authority positions to be able to think, much less act, in contravention to their biases.

I've seen it in briefings before. Brass gets it this way "I wouldnt do it that way and I can see no reason why THEY would do it that way, so I'll just push your numbers where I want them to be to back up what I already had in mind."

That happens far more often than you'd think. From wargames to training to intelligence. The innovators always surprise the crap out of the complacent.

Thats why SOCOM works so well- people there act differently: instead of the above, you get stuff more like:

I woudln't do it that way because I knwo XYZ works well for us - but lets see what would happen if I did and I was thinking like Haji Jihadi - hmmm that might be wild enough to work, lets do a wargaming/exercise dry-run and try it that way to see if its viable and then see what countermeasures we can prepare."

Thats what Intelligence used to be all about - get into the other guys head, figure out where he is going and help our guys (to quote Nathan Bedford Forrest) "Get there the firstest with the mostest" while being flexible enough to spring into other contingency plans if the situation is changing its shape.

Thinking differently is always a big military advantage, from Cannae's manuver, to Henry V's longbows, to napoleons genius for battle, to Guderians use of tanks, to the blindsiding left hook in GW1. Thats why 9/11 worked so well for Al Qaeda - nobody in a position to decide or act could conceive that AlQ would want to do that - I'm sure our politicos in the 90's thru 2001 thought that they'd do a big bomb again (like in 93 WTC), or hostages etc. Becasue thats all they knew the other side was doing, and they would think the same way. Like "set a bomb, and get out" is thinkable to politicos and westerners, not "become a suicide bomb and get my virgins in Allah's palace" , which is far beyond the moral thought processes of most people. The analyst has to get into the other guys head - those are thoughts and places few people can put themselves in and come back from sanely. That is also why good analysts are worth their weight in gold, but are hard to keep in a "Politically Correct" environment - they say things people cannot understand and do not want to hear. Thats why our anaysts failed - because in the 90's the "odd" ones got weeded out by PC-ness and risk aversion in their political managers.

War changes that, and hayden needs to clean out those tht forced out the good ones, and maybe talk some of those odd but good analysts into coming back.

Posted by Oldspook 2006-05-12 16:07||   2006-05-12 16:07|| Front Page Top

#25 "well Iranians jumped up and down on national TV with vials of the stuff it ain't no secret"

I saw clips of the yellowcake party on LINK TV's Mosaic News. Honest to God, it was a huge yellow cake with what at first looked like two missiles, but after pausing TIVO, they were indeed phallic symbols!!! Sending his message to President Bush, it was neither Freudian slip nor a reflex finger salute, but blatantly prominent, and about the same time all the other tapes and videos appeared. Ahmadinejad is so volatile he even has the UN scared...hope Condi comes to the rescue soon.
Posted by Danielle 2006-05-12 16:17||   2006-05-12 16:17|| Front Page Top

#26 Hear, hear OS!
Posted by 6 2006-05-12 16:37||   2006-05-12 16:37|| Front Page Top

#27 Pakistanis provided used centrifuges so the contamination could possiblky be from there.

Amazing that they claim AQ Khan did this without permission.
How does equipment like this leave a Pak military facility and end up in Iran without permission?
Posted by john 2006-05-12 17:15||   2006-05-12 17:15|| Front Page Top

#28 Iranian nuke within six months. The only question remaining is where they test it -- someplace inside Iran, Tel Aviv, or NYC.
Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford  2006-05-12 18:14|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/]  2006-05-12 18:14|| Front Page Top

#29 In all seriousnes...the letters to GW gain a whole knew level of significance in light of this. The letters were a direct threat to GW, the US and its allies. Now that we have rejected islam, Ahmadinejad is free to (try to) anhialate GW, the US, and its allies. I truly believe he thinks allan will intervene.
Posted by anymouse">anymouse  2006-05-12 18:34||   2006-05-12 18:34|| Front Page Top

#30 Mamhoud's schedule is end of August. Much less than 6 months.
Posted by Thinemp Whimble2412 2006-05-12 18:39||   2006-05-12 18:39|| Front Page Top

#31 This is going to be a very interesting summer.
Posted by Oldspook 2006-05-12 20:08||   2006-05-12 20:08|| Front Page Top

#32 The pace is quickening. Clearly, Ahmamadnutjob is building up to something-- but what? Does he figure we're like Spain, and one good strike with a nuke and America will go running home from Iraq with its tail between its legs?

I don't put ANYTHING past this crazy asshole.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D.  2006-05-12 20:26||   2006-05-12 20:26|| Front Page Top

#33 "The only question remaining is where they test it -- someplace inside Iran, Tel Aviv, or NYC."

Baghdad. If the rantings about the 12th iman are acccurate.
Posted by Fordesque 2006-05-12 20:59||   2006-05-12 20:59|| Front Page Top

#34 Now, now, the US Ninth has ruled that America is an illegal and unconstitutional nation, a decision which the Ninth is not nor will not take action or demand action to enforce vs not enforce, ergo the USA per se has no standing, right, or venue to make decisions affecting the International community, obey or disobey the UNO, nor prosecute Saddam, nor invade anyone. HECK, THE USA HAS NO STANDING, RIGHT, OR VENUE TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM INVASION - ANY NATION OR GROUP OF NATIONS CAN RIGHTFULLY INVADE CONUS ANDOR WAGE WAR AGAINST EACH OTHER ON CONUS AND NORAM SOIL PER SE, BUT THE "USA" HAS NO STANDING TO INTERFERE WITH THE DECISION OR ACTIONS OF "LEGITIMATE SOVEREIGN NATIONS" ON ITS OWN SOIL, ON ITS OWN CONTINENT OR NEIGHBORHOODS.
Posted by JosephMendiola 2006-05-12 21:02||   2006-05-12 21:02|| Front Page Top

#35 This finding was from a site that was decked some time ago (last year). Since then they have been using a proxy location, so you realize the "findings" were left from over a year ago or more.
Posted by Captain America 2006-05-12 23:22||   2006-05-12 23:22|| Front Page Top

23:43 jim#6
23:39 11A5S
23:37 trailing wife
23:28 jim#6
23:23  Barbara Skolaut
23:22 Captain America
23:15 trailing wife
23:11 Frank G
23:08 Frank G
23:07 Frank G
23:05 trailing wife
23:02 trailing wife
23:02 2b
22:58 2b
22:51 Phiter Phavilet5544
22:48 trailing wife
22:40 2b
22:40 trailing wife
22:39 TMH
22:34 jim#6
22:34 Elmart Ebbeating3116
22:29 PBMcL
22:27 Frank G
22:21 trailing wife









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com