CFR Report: Not Much Demand For Nukes

[Tuckerfan]

At least as far as terrorist groups are concerned.

You don’t find too many – too much evidence on the demand side for nuclear materials. Countries that want nuclear weapons don’t want to just buy some nuclear material from the black market. They want to be able to produce it themselves. But terrorist groups – they don’t need to produce it. They – you know, one nuclear weapon in their hands would be enough. So the demand that there is is probably from terrorist groups. But apart from A.Q. – from al Qaeda’s statements about wanting nuclear weapons and the efforts by Aum Shin Rikio, the Japanese cult, back in the early 1990s to obtain loose nukes from the Soviet Union – an effort that failed. There’s not a lot of evidence about the demand side.

Even the Iranians don’t seem to be in a hurry to get nukes.

You know, Khan gave Iran enrichment technology in 1985 for the first time, and then again in – throughout late 1980s and 1990s. But Iran’s had technology for a long time – 22 years now – and they haven’t gotten to a weapon capability yet. It indicates they’ve been on a much more lackadaisical path than Pakistan was on, which – in Pakistan’s case, from the time Khan stole the technology from the Netherlands to the time that he could say he could produce nuclear weapon was 10 years.

The author of the report, it should be noted worked in the Bush 1.0 Administration.