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December 12, 2006
Iran To Have Nuclear Weapons By 2008
Iran Will Have Nuclear Weapons By 2008
WASHINGTON
Newsmax
Iran announced over the weekend it was launching a bomb-scale uranium enrichment program, despite a U.N. Security Council demand that it freeze its nuclear activities.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly told a group of students Saturday that Iran had started the installation of 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its fuel plant near Natanz, calling it "the first step toward industrial production."
Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Persian Gulf responded Sunday by announcing their intention to launch a joint nuclear development effort "for peaceful purposes."
The United States and Europe have been seeking United Nations sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing programs, but Russia and China have refused to go along.
"Resistance of the Iranian nation in the past year forced them to retreat tens of steps over the Iran's nuclear issue," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Israeli nuclear experts told NewsMax that the installation of the 3,000 centrifuge "pilot plant" at Natanz was a key turning plant in Iran's nuclear weapons development.
"The Iranians are calling this a ‘pilot plant,' one Israeli analyst noted. "But this isn't a pilot plant: 3,000 centrifuges give them the capability of producing one significant quantity of nuclear fuel per year."
A "significant quantity" (SQ) is the amount of nuclear material needed to manufacture one nuclear device, currently defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as 25 kilograms of uranium, and just 8 kilograms of plutonium.
Wild Thing's comment.......
I guess Russia and China will be making a toast to this IF it does happen.
Posted by Wild Thing at December 12, 2006 12:55 AM
