Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program: Oops, Let's Look at That Again

The headline is dry enough, and the first few paragraphs are hardly what I'd call heated prose. But this article got my attention anyway:

"U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat"
The Wall Street Journal (October 16, 2009)

"Amid Pressure After Latest Nuclear Revelations, Spy Agencies Rethink a 2007 Judgment That Weapons Effort Had Been Halted"

"U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

"The intelligence agencies' rethink comes as pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill, and among U.S. allies, for the Obama administration to redo the 2007 assessment, after a string of recent revelations about Tehran's nuclear program.

"German, French and British intelligence agencies have all disputed the conclusions of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, in recent months, according to European officials briefed on the exchanges...."

So Iran's Ayatollahs Get the Bomb: What's the Worst that Could Happen?

Odds are, I think, pretty good that Iran won't have more than the dozen or so nuclear weapons that North Korea probably has, any time soon: and probably nothing all that much more powerful than the devices that overheated parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

More effective weapons, like the hydrogen bomb that put a mile-wide crater near Nam island in the Pacific, back in the fifties.¹ More powerful bombs have been developed since then, of course.

However, it's quite expensive to build, say, a 100 megaton hydrogen bomb: and you need fairly specialized equipment to make the components. And, of course, people who can run the machines.

So I don't think that Iran will be punching mile-wide holes in the ground any time soon.

But it's remarkable, how much damage can be done with just a dozen or so kilotons-worth of atomic bomb.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Two Very Unpleasant Days

A piddly little 13 to 18 kiloton bomb vaporized part of Hiroshima, killed around 140,000 people, and make others really sick. The 21 kiloton bomb that went off over Nagasaki would have done quite a lot more damage, if it weren't for the hills there. Even so, about 39,000 people were killed.

Those were very unpleasant experiences, and I hope that sort of thing doesn't happen again.

On the other hand, I'm not going to indulge in the conventional apology for a decision made by President Truman, which saved thousands - maybe millions - of Japanese lives. And quite a number of American lives, for what that's worth.²

Like it or not, Japan's leaders during WWII had given no indication that they wanted to surrender (and yes, I know about the 'surrender/capitulation' translation - the story's been on campuses for at least thirty years).

On the other hand, experience in the Pacific theater had taught that Japanese forces were quite willing to fight to the death, rather than surrender. And quite capable of employing Japanese civilians for combat and combat support.

Accepting death before defeat can be an admirable trait, and won Spartans lasting fame at Thermopylae. But the resolve of Japanese leaders also indicated that an invasion of the Japanese homeland would most likely involve fighting until the vast majority of Japanese citizens were dead. Along with quite a large number of Americans. Including my father, who served on an LST slated for use in the invasion.

Without the reality-check of those nuclear bombs, a conventional invasion of Japan was, I've read and been told, was the only realistic alternative.

I'm one of the people who most likely wouldn't have been born, if President Truman had been 'nice.'

I'm not sorry I'm alive, and I'm not at all sorry that thousands (millions?) of Japanese citizens around my age and younger are alive, too. (More at "Unintended Consequences? The West May be Getting Over Hiroshima" (January 25, 2008))

Iran's Ayatollahs With A-Bombs

I think many people would agree that cities like Budapest, Vienna, Athens or Warsaw wouldn't be improved by having a nuclear bomb detonated over - or in - them. The same probably goes for Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London and Madrid.

Some of those cities aren't withing range of missiles Iran's known to have, today: but I don't think there's any reason to believe that something like Fat Man couldn't be shipped in via air freight.

As for the idea that London, say, wouldn't be hit because there are mosques there? Muslims who follow the wacky side of Islam have shown little if any reservations about hitting a mosque. Maybe if it isn't the one they go to, it's just another enemy target. The rationale doesn't matter: the fact is, Muslims blowing up other Muslims and mosques is a fairly routine news item, and has been for years.

All things considered, I don't think this period is one of Islam's shining hours.

But that's another topic.

A Hundred Thousand or So Dead Parisians Wouldn't be Nice

I think that people in France wouldn't like it if part of Paris was obliterated. They might even be irrité if bits and pieces of Madrid or Moscow started falling out of a mushroom cloud. Can't say that I'd blame them.

I wouldn't be happy, either: and I wouldn't be happy if an American city was nuked.

The sort of death and destruction that would go along with that sort of an even would be, as I said before, unpleasant.

What happened as a result of a nuclear strike probably wouldn't be pleasant, either.

Remember how many people felt after the 9/11 attack? 'Only' around 3,000 people died then. The death toll from a nuclear attack on a major city, even with a low-yield bomb, could easily be fifty times as large.

America, the likes of Professor Ward Churchill notwithstanding, took time to figure out who actually launched the 9/11 attack - and where they were based. Then, an American-led coalition ended the Taliban's control of Afghanistan: despite the 'nuke Kabul' rhetoric of some of America's more hot-headed citizens.

A nuclear strike in America might, or might not, provoke America to lash out thoughtlessly. But let's say the target wasn't in America.

Quite a few nations have, or most likely have, nuclear weapons:

• US
• Russia
• United Kingdom
• France
• China
• Israel
• India
• Pakistan
• North Korea
  (Source: GlobalSecurity.org)

Several of those countries have missiles that could deliver warheads a significant distance. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that their leaders might, if they suffered a nuclear attack, respond in kind.

If the Iran's Ayatollahs ordered the attack, and used a missile launched from Iran, the sort of detective work that went into finding out that - despite the number of Saudi citizens among the 9/11 terrorists - the rulers of Afghanistan were responsible, and not Saudi Arabia.

Let's Say Iran Nukes Moscow

I really wouldn't like to read, sometime in the next few years, that part of Moscow had been destroyed, and that people could start moving back into the Tehran area in another few centuries.

On the other hand, that sort of scenario would end the "Iranian nukes" issue.

What to do? Short of Obliterating Iran

I have a great respect for the people of Iran and their history. I think the world would be better with Iran, than without the country.

The Ayatollahs are something else: but the Ayatollahs are not Iran. (See "Journalism in the Information Age, Or Nothing Says 'No' Like a Brightly Burning Motorcycle" (June 24, 2009))

An option that gets discussed in the news quite often is economic sanctions against Iran. It sounds like an attractive idea, and would be even more attractive to me if there were a good chance that it would work.

But so far, economic sanctions haven't done much more to Iran than give the leaders there something to talk about, and hurt the citizenry.

I'm not at all convinced that sanctions work, as a rule. Take North Korea, for example: economic sanctions have probably hurt Koreans who aren't connected with Kim Jon Il's government: but there's little reason to believe that he's suffered. His staff has probably had to scramble to keep up his supplies of lobster - but they're out of the loop when it comes to decision-making.

I'd love to have a practical, humane, popular, and swift solution to the problem of religious fanatics trying to get nuclear weapons.

I don't have one.

I do think that there's a chance that the Ayatollahs will mismanage Iran so badly that significant Iranians end their rule - and, probably, their lives.

Whether that happens before Iran builds and delivers a nuclear bomb depends on knowledge I don't have.

I'm afraid that military force will be necessary to end the threat of Ayatollahs with nukes. It doesn't need to be a 'nuke Tehran' approach. If the:

• Iranian nuclear program is concentrated in a few places
• Facilities
  • Can be precisely located
  • Are close enough to the surface so that 'bunker buster' penetrating bombs would be effective

Then maybe an equivalent to Israel's bombing of Iraq's reactor, back in 1981, would end the threat - long enough for fed-up Iranians to solve their problems with a new set of leaders.

That's a lot of "ifs," though.

So, do I think sanctions will work? No.

Would a precise military strike be effective? Maybe - but I think the odds are mighty slim. Even so: I think the odds are that someone is going to solve the 'Iranian nukes' issue with something between a comparatively precise attack, and a full-scale assault that will leave much of Iran in ruins.

Do I have a better idea? Other than wait and hope that Iran's people wipe out the Ayatollahs and their government: no.

Do I think this is a satisfactory state of affairs? Certainly not.

Related posts:

• "Obama, Iran, Missiles, Europe, and 'What the heck did they tell him?' "
  (September 17, 2009)
• "Iran Leaders Request Investigation of Supereme Leader: An Iranian My Lai? Maybe, Maybe Not"
  (August 14, 2009)
• "Iran Tries Outside Agitators: It Can't Happen Here, Right?"
  (August 8, 2009)
• "Journalism in the Information Age, Or Nothing Says 'No' Like a Brightly Burning Motorcycle"
  (June 24, 2009)
• "'U. S. Bombed Mosque:' Iran Official - 'When in Doubt, Blame the Americans' "
  (May 29, 2009)
• "Russia, Iran, Nuclear Weapons: Not Much Has Changed"
  (September 27, 2008)
• "Russia, Iran, Nuclear Weapons: Not Much Has Changed"
  (September 27, 2008)
• "Iranian Nukes, Israeli Attack, Diplomacy, and Common Sense"
  (June 21, 2008)
• "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Japan: Join Us, America Will be Gone (and Israeli Official Warns Iran)"
  (June 6, 2008)
• "How to Succeed in Conflicts: Three Approaches"
  (February 20, 2008)
• "Common Sense Knows No Boundaries: Neither does Bureaucratic Vindictiveness"
  (February 14, 2008)
• "Iran Poses No Threat? Guess Again"
  (February 7, 2008)
• "Unintended Consequences? The West May be Getting Over Hiroshima"
  (January 25, 2008)
• "Russian Official Declares First-Strike Nuke Policy: Why?"
  (January 19, 2008)
• "Iran: Another Unilateral Quagmire?"
  (November 1, 2007)
• "America Declared Sanctions Against Iranian Armed Forces"
  (October 25, 2007)
• "French Official Speaks Out on Iran: and it Isn't America's Fault"
  (September 17, 2007)
• "Six Years Ago, Tomorrow: Remembering 9/11"
  (September 10, 2007)
• "Peace, Hope, and Jihadists With Nuclear Bombs"
  (September 2, 2007)

In the news:

• "U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat"
  The Wall Street Journal (October 16, 2009)

Background:

• "Status of Nuclear Powers and Their Nuclear Capabilities"
  GlobalSecurity.org (data as of 01 January 2005)
• "Mechanism of the Hydrogen Bomb"
  Samantha Haskins, via .docstoc (probably October, 2005)
• Archdiocese of Nagasaki
• Diocese of Hiroshima

---

¹Mile-Wide Crater: Roughly

The crater wasn't exactly a mile across. Haskins's paper says that the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb had a 15 megaton yield, and produced a crater 6.500 feet in diameter and 250 feet deep. I think those numbers are rounded: but you get the idea. Hydrogen bombs have been built with a design yield of 100 megatons. (GlobalSecurity.org) For comparison, the nuclear bomb detonated over Hiroshima was rated at 12 kilotons. (GlobalSecurity.org) Or 13 to 18. Depends on who you read.

²Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and People Like Me

The civil rights movement in America taught us to think of people in terms of their ethnicity and ancestry. Every ancestor of mine that I know of descended from people in northwestern Europe, and I look it: melanin-deficient skin, blue eyes and all. You'd think that people in Japan would be utterly foreign to me.

It's a fact: I'd stick out like a sore thumb in Tokyo, if I wandered away from the usual tourist haunts.

On the other hand, I have a great deal in common with quite a few people in Hiroshima. And even more in Nagasaki. I'm Catholic. There are - and were - quite a few Catholics in those two cities. Quite a few of them died when those nuclear bombs went off.

I'm not happy about that. At all.

But I'm not going to rant about Yankee imperialism, for the reasons I've outlined.

That photo? According to an accompanying article, that's what was left of the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, after the "Fat Man" bomb went off. Like I said, I'm not happy about that.

America Declared Sanctions Against Iranian Armed Forces

America has declared sanctions against Irans Revolutionary Guard, and about two dozen Iranian entities that the RG controls: including companies and individuals.

This is historic, since it's the first time that America has made these sorts of sanctions against the armed forces of another country.

I'd see this as good news, except that

• Sanctions don't have a very good track record, in terms of results.
• America doesn't trade very much with Iran anyway, thanks to the ayatollah's takeover a few decades back.
• European countries will, unless things have changed a great deal, go on with business-as-usual with Iran.

The sanctions were, however, definitely a gesture. At least it's now clear that America doesn't approve of the way the Revolutionary Guard of Iran supports terrorism.

Resolutions "Worthless Papers" - Iran's President Ahmadinejad

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran are "worthless papers." He declared that Iran will not give up what he calls its right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

In a way, I admire his clear declaration. At least you know where he stands.

The U.N. has imposed sanctions on Iran, twice, and now we're into the second day of talk with the European Union's foreign policy chief, about Tehran's nuclear program: That Tehran didn't acknowledge until it was uncovered several years ago.

America and its allies say that the ayatollahs of Iran want to make nuclear weapons. Iran's rulers say 'no.' They say that the major oil-exporting nation needs nuclear reactors to provide power to its people.

Here's what President Ahmadinejad said: "The so-called dossier at the Security Council is a pile of papers that have no value. They can add to those worthless papers everyday because it has no effect on the will of the Iranian nation," at least according to Iranian state television.

I don't often agree with Ahmadinejad, or the ayatollahs who actually run Iran, but this time I think he's got a point.

Another man, a little over ninety years ago, had a few words about how useful ink on paper is. It was 1914, an eventful year:

• June 28: Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated
• August 3: Germany declared war on France
• August 4: Germany declared war on Belgium
• September 15: first western front trenches dug

America's President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a 3,000+ word piece for the New York Times:

"In the first place, events have clearly demonstrated that treaties not backed by force are not worth the paper upon which they are written. Events have clearly shown that it is the idlest folly to assert, and little short of treason against the nation for statesmen who should know better to pretend, that the salvation of any nation under existing world conditions can be trusted to treaties, to little bits of paper with names signed on them, but without any efficient force behind them. The United States will be guilty of criminal misconduct, we of this generation will show ourselves traitors to our children and our children's children, if, as conditions are now, we do not keep ourselves ready to defend our hearths, trusting in great crises not to treaties, not to the ineffective good will of outsiders, but to our own stout hearts and strong hands."

Theodore Roosevelt, writing in The New York Times (October 18, 1914 Magazine Section, Page SM1) (Previewed in The New York Times Archives)

I don't often find myself on the same page as Presidents Ahmadinejad and Theodore Roosevelt. But this is one of those times.

Resolutions and treaties are are effective: as long as the nations affected are law-abiding, and want to cooperate. If the nations affected don't want to comply, resolutions and treaties are no more valuable than so much scrap paper.

Unless there is force to back up the agreements.

I heartily agree with those who believe that it would be nice if everyone were nice.

This isn't a perfect world, though, so accommodations have to be made for nations whose leaders want to bring death and disruption. Unhappily, some of those accommodations involve using military force to stop terrorists and others who don't like freedom.

Related posts, on Individuals and the War on Terror.

U.S. Abandons Sanctions! Plans to Bomb Iran!

It's not too unlikely that we'll be seeing headlines like that tomorrow.

Fact is, Germany decided they were making too much money, trading with Iran, and refused to cooperate with sanctions. Since Germany is one of three key European players in the deal, sanctions are DOA.

The article I used as my reference was much more polite about it, but that's the gist.

So, with Germany giving a no-go on economic sanctions, and religious fanatics in the process of making nuclear weapons in Iran, U.S. officials are working out plans for what would probably be a week of bombing. Presumably, Iran would be left with a nuclear program that was either years before its pre-deconstruction status, or non-existent.

The White House "has just about had it with Iran," an unnamed foreign diplomat said. "They tried the diplomatic process. China is now obstructing them at the U.N. Security Council and the Russians are tucking themselves behind them.

"The Germans are wobbling …There are a number of people in the administration who do not want their legacy to be leaving behind an Iran that is nuclear armed, so they are looking at what are the alternatives? They are looking at other options," the diplomat said.

Of course, it may be that Iran, with a fabulous over-supply of oil, desperately needs all that nuclear material to fuel reactors, for peaceful civilian purposes.

Or, maybe if a Senate committee wrote a nice, polite note and sent it to, Iran would promise to leave us alone.

Personally, I wouldn't count on it.