Diplomatic Option Rapidly Fading, Iran Completes 164-Centrifuge Cascade

BREAKING NEWS:

Vital Perspective's sources say that Iran has moved significantly closer to full self-sufficiency in operating a fuel cycle. The IAEA has made it known that Iran has completed the construction of a 164-centrifuge cascade, the minimum necessary for full-scale nuclear-fuel enrichment. While the stalemate in the Security Council continues as a result of Russia's stalling, Iran is moving dangerously closer to the technological point of no return.

UPDATE 3/22 @ 9:01am: The above is in today's New York Times, New York Sun and Los Angeles Times - you read it here first.

Comments

[Steve Schippert]

Gentlemen, breathe.

Please forgive me, but this 164-centrifuge cascade is significant in that it demonstrates their largest (publicly) displayed centrifuge array, but 164 is by no means "the minimum necessary for full-scale nuclear-fuel enrichment." 164 centrifuges is not the minimum for mass production any differently than a Briggs & Stratton is the minimum for an automobile engine. 164 is still research level.

What it is is a thumb in the eye and a dare. That is the news of the story. It is a message for an increasingly cornered Iran who will not be prevented from nuclear weapons status by UN Sanctions, but they sure would prefer to do it that way. The current regime is speaking the language it understands. This is consistent with the past 3 years of negotiations conduct.

What we perhaps should ask ourselves is, do they already have uranium and/or plutonium stores via North Korea (or the Ukraine or even China to a lesser potential?) that, to a degree, makes the public urgency of the nuclear program somewhat less so within the regime privately?

Perhaps we should also ask what of the laser enrichment work going on in and north of Tehran? Laser enrichment, unlike centrifuge enrichment, makes no satellite-detectable vibration signatures for us to listen to and seek out.

But with a 164-centrifuge array, they will produce grams per year, not kilograms. The aim is for a 50,000-centrifuge array. There is good reason for the number is so high.

Please consider Ahmadinejad Demands West’s Apology, or Iran to step up enrichment or The Australian.

I love Vital Perspective. I just think you're a little off on this point.

Cheers.

[Vital Perspective]

Appreciate your comments Steve. As you rightly point out, the 164-centrifuge cascade is significant first and foremost on the R&D level, and that is precisely the point. At issue is not when Iran reaches full nuclear capability, but when it reaches technological independence with the completion of the R&D phase. Iran's only remaining bottleneck is its failure to master the cascade process. Once this is perfected, the assembly of a bomb is relatively simple. The first bomb, requiring uranium from approximately 2,000 centrifuges, is much more significant strategically than the 10th or 20th bomb, implicit in the full 50,000 centrifuge program Iran is planning. For this reason, we believe, time is running out. The diplomatic option, based on suspension of Iran's race to technological self-sufficiency, will be pointless once Iran has crossed the finish line. This might be a matter of months, if not weeks.

[Steve Schippert]

Fair argument. It is odd (to me) that I find myself above stepping back rather than forward WRT the Iranian Nuclear Program. If you've read anything I've produced in the past year, this hawk has a large wingspan when it comes to the Iranian regime (just to be clear).

After considering your comment above as well as other context, I find myself stretching those wings once again.

Considering the present arguments on the Iranian nuclear timeline, it became clear to me just a few short months ago how near Iran was by listening to the words of ElBaradei himself who said that the Iranian nuclear timeline was far shorter than largely believed. In fact he gave the shortest 'official' timeline on record when he said it, and he gave a timeline shorter than three years while the usual suspects continued to trumpet the 'suddenly credible' CIA/NIA estimate of an unrealistic ten years.

At any rate, not a fine time for a hawk to blink (insofar as the comment I left here suggests). Good work.