Iran, Sanctions, and the Atom Bomb

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, so the latest outrage that makes a few conservative friends of mind red faced with bulging veins is that apparently Obama has made a deal with Iran that will result in the country being able to increase their GDP by selling oil. In return, they agree to let the inspectors visit sites inside the country instead of guessing from the outside.

Letting Iran sell billions of dollars worth of oil in principle gives them more resources to build an atom bomb with, however, they would have to do it under the nose of inspectors or throw them out again and hope the world will be slow in re-instantiating sanctions.

My thinking is I don’t see the point. Ultimately, Iran needs a big pile of raw uranium and a chemical plant. They need a bunch of high speed centrifuges, lasers, or calutrons. All the basic ideas for how to build all of this stuff is readily available and the detailed knowledge to actually build it they can learn or buy, and already have.

Once they get enough of the pure U-235 in storage, they pretty much have it made. The last step for a basic A-bomb is a lot easier than the enrichment part. Sure, making hydrogen bombs with respectable yield would take a lot more work and probably require setting off prototype devices for testing, but a mere 15 kilotons is plenty if they intend to create a last resort against invasion…

All they have to do is sneak a 15 kiloton device into Washington DC. Go for 10+ major American cities if they have that many bombs. If they had well trained and well equipped commando teams, without single points of failure (lists of who the agents are, how they plan to get in, etc), I don’t see how they could all be stopped. There’s more schemes that would probably work than could fit into a paper encyclopedia. A few obvious ones - the USA border is not protected at all in many places, such as the Washington State coastline. Iran could purchase or hijack some ocean going yachts, registered under another flag. They would sail to an undefended section of coast, then sneak their 1 ton or so crude A-bomb ashore in a boat, then load it into a rented van and drive it to the target. If they were caught, they’d set the device off with suicide switches, and they would pick a route that would pass through many major cities on the way to the target. Once the bomb were loaded into the vehicle it would be sealed with anti-tamper devices, and there would be a sensor like in the movie Speed that would set it off if the vehicle were stopped more than 20 minutes or so.

You don’t need ICBMs to essentially ruin the civilized world. Am I about right about this, or am I off base? It seems to me that the reason Iran doesn’t have nukes right now (if they don’t…) is because they haven’t really made a full out effort. ICBMs, if just a couple were launched, can be intercepted, and an awful lot of stuff had to work. The rocket, the guidance, all that aerospace hardware, the compact nuclear warhead has to survive the launch, reentry, etc and still go off with full yield, you want H-bombs to maximize the effect of an expensive missile, and so on and so forth.

A gun-type U-235 device that is just Fat Man made with slightly more compact parts is something that almost any nation could build, OTOH…

2

You have 3 options:

  1. Sanctions.
  2. War.
  3. Diplomacy.

1 is starting to fail. China and Russia and increasing trade with Iran and don’t care one bit about sanctions.

It’s amazing how many people haven’t learned the problem with 2. Starting with “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” (Attributed to McArthur without a source.) To the recent messes. (Including the so-far failed attempt to do something using air power only.)

That leaves 3. And given how Iran knows 1 and 2 are not happening, it is a surprisingly good deal.

Note that there are currently 9 nuclear nations. And not one of them has yet snuck a bomb into an enemy’s country and set one off. Sure, it might happen someday, but one shouldn’t assume that it must happen. If you adopt that mindset, you are pretty much stuck with option 2. Good luck with that.

3

Who knew it was that easy?

4

Do cars drive into DC? Don’t you need just a plastic ID card and some cash to rent a car, or basic tools to steal one? Aren’t there several hundred million people on the road right now?

My point is, the weapon would be almost as deadly if it were snuck in, and I do not know of any way this could be stopped if multiple independent attempts using different methods were made.

5

A few years ago, an Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in DC was foiled. There are almost 100 murders a year in DC, and Iran somehow got caught. Also a few years ago, some Iranian agents tried to build a bomb in Bangkok. They ended up blowing themselves up, basically.

What makes you think that smuggling a nuclear weapon halfway around the world from one of the most heavily watched countries is a piece of cake, when much simpler schemes have failed?

ETA: also note that if a plot to smuggle in a weapon were detected, I’d bet the U.S. would likely launch a preemptive nuclear strike on Iranian military and government sites in order to try to disrupt the command and control systems that may be involved in other smuggling plots.

6

What drives fanatics (and crime in general) is tough economic times and high unemployment.

A good way to cause that is to impose sanctions.

Take a look through history and find a country where fanatics rose out of a strong economy.

7

Bin Laden and the 9/11 suicide crew from Saudi Arabia?

Not that I’m disagreeing with you. That’s probably an exception to the rule. An Iranian population that’s economically well off is much less danger than a poor population with a grudge against the powers that made them poor. IMHO, that’s the best long term outcome of the deal.

8

You assume Iran is capable of building a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into a car.

And that they could do so without anybody noticing.

And that they could then sail that bomb halfway around the world, get it into the US, and drive it cross-country without anyone noticing, following the rules of the road to a fault without getting pulled over once or drawing attention to themselves in any way.

And that nobody would put two and two together and turn their entire nation into glass within hours of them pulling it off.

9

I don’t see any reason why the plan proposed in the OP wouldn’t work.

But I also fail to see a reason why Iran would want to implement this plan. I wish the OP would elaborate on that.

10

As a last resort. If the 3rd armored division and the 101st and 88th airborne divisions and all the rest of the US Army line up outside the Iranian border, to “regime change” their leadership, same fate as Saddam, they’d have a trump card. They don’t have to have a missile capable of hitting the USA, just comment out loud “wow we’ve got 10+ of these things about the size of a couple refrigerators that can kill half a million people apiece(if those people are crammed together like in a densely populated city). Would be a shame if one of them went off in a major American city…”

I always assumed that Iran felt, after the invasion of Iraq, that they needed to get this technology for their own survival. Once they are holding a wildcard like that - if there’s even a chance they could successfully deploy it - the U.S. would back off.

It’s simple math. Value of Iran’s oil, a couple trillion. Cost of an invasion - well, the Bush administration thought it would be on the order of a few hundred billion, tops. Cost if a 15 kiloton nuke goes off in Central Park, New York (I’m no nuclear weapons planner but that appears to be roughly ground zero if you were trying to do the most damage), near the steps of the Washington DC capital, someone in LA, somewhere in downtown Houston…the bill could easily zoom past multiple trillions of dollars in lost human capital and property damage.

Could someone successfully sneak one in? I can see them being stopped, I just don’t see how you could stop 10 separate teams if they each have a separate plan of attack and you don’t have advance warning. Even 1 nuke, the damage would be unthinkable…

11

You don’t get it. If a country is going to nuke the U.S., or any nuclear power, a conventional invasion isn’t going to be the response. It will be nuclear. The U.S. does not have a “no first use” policy on strategic nuclear weapons. This concept is called “deterrence,” I’m sure there’s a wiki article on it.

12

Iran could, plausibly, set off one nuke in the US.

They could possibly even set off 10.

The US can, with no ifs, ands, or buts, set off at least 8,000 in their territory.

For Iran to engage in any sort of nuclear attack on the US would be an act of national suicide, and the Iranian government knows that.

13

They are religious nuts. They don’t believe in logic, or rational thought. They believe that a camel salesman over a thousand years ago, who created this knock-off of another popular religion, has written down the literal word of God. That the entity that created this entire freaking universe cares that the women are properly shawled up in burkas and aren’t allowed to drive, that committing murder of unbelievers leads to limitless sex with attractive virgins, and so on and so forth.
You know why Islam is the “religion of peace”. It damn well isn’t, and any idiot with eyes can see that(the relative ratio of extremists is vastly higher). The reason we have to make mealy mouthed platitudes that the problem with Arabs isn’t their religion, it’s those extremists…is that nearly everything you can say about how Islam is a bullshit religion can be aimed at every other religion as well.
So I could totally see a religious nut leader - Iran is governed by clerics, remember - deciding that his bullshit interpretation of the Koran means that everyone in his whole country shall ascend to heaven on a pillar of nuclear fire as America kills everyone in revenge.

14

It’s cute that you think Iranians are Arabs, and that all Muslims believe the exact same things without exception, or that the Iranian government believes the same things that al-Qaeda does, and that “Arabs” and “Muslims” are culturally identical, and that Iran requires women to wear burqas, and that government leaders in general are willing to get themselves killed in order to deal a minor wound to their enemy, and that people who don’t “believe in logic or rational thought” would be able to construct a nuclear weapon smaller than any the US has ever manufactured.

15

I specifically mentioned a device weighing about 2000 lbs and about the size of a couple vending machines. It would fit in a cargo van. All the current warheads in the U.S. arsenal are smaller and lighter than that. Edit : I’m sure you will nitpick that the B83 hydrogen bomb, which weighs 2400 pounds, means that the Iranians could not therefore make a straight fission warhead weighing under 2k.

I am not going to argue with the rest of your statements. I’m sure Iranians are sorta not Arabs even though they have brown skin and are muslims. I don’t really care, your nitpick does in no way reduce the validity of my statement. Even if women in Iran don’t wear burkas, they are still a theocracy practicing a bullshit religion, and an identified enemy of the United States.

16

Holy Christ, the ignorance - it burns my brain.

17

So your argument is effectively all swarthy middle eastern people think alike?

18

On both their parts! Because, yeah, nuclear warheads exist that would easily fit inside a typical van – even into the trunk of a small car. There are nuclear weapons that can be fired from an 8-inch howitzer, and the “backpack nuke” was a reality in prototype.

So, yeah, a smuggled bomb is a serious consideration for anti-terrorist planners.

And…so what if it weren’t so? Suppose the smallest possible nuclear warhead took up 100 cubic feet and weighed seven tons. That would still fit into a small ship or yacht, and could be sailed right up to the coastline, or up any of a number of rivers, threatening a hell of a lot of U.S. cities.

The threat should not be minimized nor dismissed. Yet, too, we can’t let it paralyze us. Are we just going to give in to blackmail, withdraw from the world, take up a position of total cowardly isolationism, and, like the cartoon ostrich, bury our head? Doesn’t seem very wise.

Engaging with the world via diplomacy, as a first choice, then by economic leverage, and finally by “diplomacy by other means” – force – when compelled to – is still the best series of interactions.

19

So there’s Saudi Arabia. And Egypt. And Syria. And Iraq. And Qatar. And Iran. And Turkey. And Pakistan. And Libya. Umm. I’m perceiving a trend here. They may not all agree with each other, but these are hardly bastions of the free world.

20

Of course. That’s why they want one - the biggest, baddest country in their world is their declared enemy. It would be foolish to not to want the ultimate deterrence. Wouldn’t you, in their shoes? The more the U.S. threatens them, the greater their perceived need is.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again - I really don’t think so. You’re free to disagree but I’ve been watching and reading about that corner of the world for a long time. The theocrats make a lot of foolish mistakes and miscalculations but they are not irrational. I know a lot of folks assume that religious zealotry automatically = completely nuts, but it just ain’t so. They’re perfectly capable of adding up the numbers that would indicate they would be turning their country into a smoking crater to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack. They are also perfectly cognisant that a nuclear weapon makes them a lot less likely to be threatened with invasion and regime change. I am 100% certain that if the royalists were still in power they would be pursuing nuclear weapons as well - the U.S. were happily helping him develop a peaceful nuclear program for decades, but it was only a matter of time. Probably ditto the secularists - it certainly didn’t slow down the INC in India. Believe it or not I am pretty sure they are all pretty ardent nationalists that love their country, religious bigots or not.

Do I believe they are only interested in the peaceful development of nuclear power? No. Am I cheered by that thought? Fuck no. Do I believe the second the current regime got their hands on a nuclear device they would use it? No.

Diplomacy/inspections might slow or prevent them from developing a weapon. Your only other option is probably an invasion and prolonged occupation, as Iran and everybody else learned the lesson dished out at Osirak. Good luck with that.