Why can't Iran just buy fissile material?

Factual Questions
1

This is not a question about the wisdom of the Iranian deal. It’s a question about its mechanics.

I’ve watched a lot of experts talk about the Iranian nuclear deal in the past few weeks. I don’t mean the clowns on Fox News who haven’t read it and wouldn’t understand it if they had; I mean serious, experienced, current and former Bush and Obama administration experts on arms control and Middle East diplomacy, on shows like Charlie Rose. I can’t watch them all, but I’ve watched a lot of them.

And so far, at least on the shows I’ve watched, they always say that all paths to a bomb are closed off by the agreement. Even the people who are against the deal are against it because they think Iran will cheat, or the lifting of sanctions will allow Iran to fund more terrorist organizations, or the inspections allowed are not adequate, or it only buys us 10 years, etc. But they agree that by giving up most of its stockpile of enriched uranium, and cutting the number of centrifuges they have by 97% or whatever, Iran’s “breakout period” will be extended from a couple of months to a year, because their ability to create enriched uranium will be drastically reduced.

Even Bebe Netanyahu, who hate hate HATES the deal, talks about a worst-case scenario where Iran gets a bomb ten years from now, when some provisions of the deal expire, by enriching yellowcake.

My question is, assuming they already have the expertise to build a bomb, why does everyone assume that they would enrich their own uranium? What would prevent Iran from covertly buying the 35 pounds of highly enriched uranium from N Korea, or Pakistan, or some Russian criminal who’s managed to steal some? It seems such an obvious question to me, but the people on the shows never seem to address it; they always seem to assume that any bomb Iran develops will be made completely from scratch.

35 pounds of uranium (let alone nine pounds of plutonium), even encased in lead, could easily be transported in a truck, and could certainly be hidden on a cargo ship. Why wouldn’t they do that? In fact, why couldn’t they buy a completely assembled bomb?

And if the answer is, “They could very easily do that,” then why isn’t that mentioned, even as a remote possibility, even by the experts who are against the deal?

2

Pretty sure that it’s difficult to get hold of uranium needed for bombs. It’s not like they sell it at WalMart.

3

Besides the fact that fissile material is more controlled than narcotics in terms of international trade, the biggest reason would be because it is phenomenally expensive to manufacture. And even though that also means it would be incredibly valuable if sold I seriously doubt it would be profitable. Any nation that undertakes to build the massive industrial infrastructure required to make significant amounts of weapons grade uranium or plutonium is only going to do it to aid their own country in building a bomb, not for any potential export profit.

4

Still true [del]30[/del] 60 years later

5

It’s not as easy to hide as you think. If it’s not shielded well enough, then you can detect the radiation from it. And if it is shielded well enough, then you can’t detect the uranium, but you can detect the shielding by the “shadow” it casts from cosmic rays. So you’d either need to avoid all of the inspections, or have some really convincing cover story ready for why you’re carrying so much lead.

6

Sure, but it’s not like they’re going to try to get it through customs. Obviously, they would smuggle it in from, say, N Korea, probably via exchanges at sea through a few intermediaries.

As for the other serious objection so far, of course it would be very expensive, but reports say that the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of accounts will mean an extra $150 billion to Iran fairly quickly, and I would think that is more than enough money to tempt anyone to sell anything. Besides, NK might be willing to do it for cost, just to poke us in the eye.

7

I’m most impressed with an OP that a) declares how really he is smarter and well-informed than so many others, and b) how his citation of that is by declaring his politics at the same time with a shibboleth of faux intellectual superiority that people who share his politics can blindly recognize.

TMI: people who watch Charlie Rose make me hot. I think. My wife does, and aside from you I’ve never announce it.

8

At some point, a ship is going to have to pull out of a harbor carrying the stuff, and at some point, a ship is going to have to pull into a harbor carrying it. If either of those points is in a country we really don’t like, like North Korea or Iran, then we’ll be insisting on the inspection (which can be as simple as an appropriately-equipped ship pulling up alongside). If either of those points is in a country we do like, then the local equivalent of the Coast Guard would do it.

9

I was just trying to very briefly provide some motivation for my question, and my political views, and my opinion of Fox News, are very well documented on this site. Sorry you took it in the most obnoxious possible way.

10

You would think that is true, but…:

Washington, DC, November 17, 2014 – Twenty years ago this week a team of American specialists completed an unprecedented operation known as Project Sapphire, working with the government of Kazakhstan to secure more than a half-ton of highly-enriched uranium that had been abandoned from a Soviet submarine project during the Cold War, according to declassified documents, video and photographs posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

By abandoned, they literally mean left in a wooden warehouse in the ass-end of East Kazakhstan secured with a cheap padlock without even a single drunk security guard or camera to keep watch on 600 kg of weapons grade HEU (~90% [SUP]235[/SUP]U). To use your analogy, this is like storing a truckload of methamphetamine in a broken down garage next to a playground.

Stranger

11

I was implicitly accused upthread of making buying uranium sound as simple as shopping at Walmart, which I don’t think I did, so I want to make very sure I’m not misunderstanding you. Are you saying it would be simple for the navy to put an EW ship into Iranian or NK waters, let alone alongside one of their harbor docks? Are you saying that we inspect, even at a distance, every boat capable of carrying a few hundred pounds of cargo that enters or leaves NK or Iranian waters?

12

Thanks for that. I didn’t argue with HailAnts about that point because he’s technically right — international trade agreements are extremely restrictive wrt uranium. But IMO that’s irrelevant, because I’m not talking about an open importation, I’m talking about a secret sale and smuggling.

13

Generally, nuclear countries have said they consider the launch of another countries nuclear weapons by a third party as an attack by the first country. So N. Korea* giving a bomb to Iran would effectively give Iran the ability to launch a nuke on N. Korea’s behalf. Given the potentially country-ending effects of launching a nuke, its unlikely any country would want to delegate it to some other nation.

And from Iran’s point of view the usefulness of a single bomb, as opposed to a bomb-program, is probably not worth the risks. They couldn’t be sure that it would work (since they obviously can’t test it). It’s basically begging for a first strike. And generally, its usefulness as a military weapon is nil, and as a deterrant is slight. It would have all the downside of a domestic nuke program with little of the upside.

*(N. Korea is particularly unlikely to sell to anyone, since unlike the other nuclear powers, they probably have a finite amount of plutonium left over from a Russian reactor, so giving some to Iran would have a permenant effect on their own possible stock-pile).

14

That’s an excellent point, although not many people would expect Iran to actually launch a weapon — most think they just want it as a threat/deterrent. What would we do to NK that we’re not already doing, as long as Iran didn’t actually launch it? IIRC nothing much happened to Pakistan when AQ Khan sold nuclear weapon technology to NK and Libya, and they just slapped his wrist.

So they’d buy enough for several bombs, and get the quantity discount. The $150 billion Iran gets from this deal is almost four times NK’s annual GDP.

However, they have uranium mines, and are known to have Pakistani enrichment technology. Although US intelligence hasn’t confirmed it, it seems very likely that they are using both.

15

Moderator Warning

Leo Bloom, this kind of personal jab is out of line in General Questions. This is an official warning for being a jerk. If you think a post is inappropriate, then report it. You know better than this.

This said, making gratuitous political remarks is not very helpful either. No warning issued, but let’s refrain from this in the future.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

16

As long as they didn’t launch it. But that decision would be up to Iran, not N Korea. I can’t imagine any country would want to delegate that power over their own fate to another country. Especially Iran and Korea, who don’t really have anything in common other than being on the US’s shit-list.

Well, if NK just wanted to make money off its stockpile, they could just give it up to China and/or the US. We’d probably happily pay more for them not to make bombs then Iran would for them to do so (indeed, that’s what we did for most of the 90’s). Plus they’d gain however many billions sanctions are costing them every year. It’s pretty hard to see how selling fissiles can be a money-making proposition for anyone.

And a few bombs are still going to be vulnerable to first strikes, testing would still destroy a sizable chunk of a limited arsenal and their deterrent value is limited.

Plus there’s the interesting question of how Iran would actually pay N. Korea. Even with their accounts unfrozen, I don’t think there’s a mechanism to actually transfer that cash to N. Korea.

17

Those are all excellent points. But even so, the fact that a certain course of action turns out to be impractical doesn’t seem to prevent really dumb courses of action being discussed on political shows all the time, so I still wonder why I haven’t heard anyone talk about this. I would think that opponents of the deal, who blithely talk about EXTREMELY impractical courses of action, would at least bring it up.

18

Sorry, I guess I was expecting people to assume that I was against the deal because of my question, and I was overly enthusiastic in trying to prevent that.

ETA: Also sorry that Leo got a warning because of me.

19

Not sure what you mean by this “shadow” from the cosmic rays. I understand the entire principle of shielding but not this shadow that shielding can cause

Thanks for any explanation

20

Well, on one hand this demonstrates it being not regulated enough, but on the other, well, it wound up in the right hands so something worked correctly.

Also, selling or giving actual fissile material to another nation is tantamount to an act of war against those countries not aligned with them. It is not something any nation could even consider doing without serious repercussions.