Iran Air Strikes Growing in Probability

blatham wrote:

Quote:

Iran's unprecedented refusal to allow access to the facility at Natanz

Israel, of course, has refused to become signatory to the NPT because 1) they desire no external determination of their programs and stockpiles and 2) because they were not in need of help in establishing their technology as the US provided that assistance.

We provided very little (if any) of that assistance.

However, I propose that we change that stance by withdrawing from the NPT and openly sharing our nuclear weapons technology with Israel.

oralloy wrote:

blatham wrote:

Quote:

Iran's unprecedented refusal to allow access to the facility at Natanz

Israel, of course, has refused to become signatory to the NPT because 1) they desire no external determination of their programs and stockpiles and 2) because they were not in need of help in establishing their technology as the US provided that assistance.

We provided very little (if any) of that assistance.

However, I propose that we change that stance by withdrawing from the NPT and openly sharing our nuclear weapons technology with Israel.

You may well have a more accurate picture of the aid Israel was given in this. My knowledge in the area is very weak. On the other hand, of course, I'd grant any government's statements on the matter to have close to zero credibility. How has your opinion been formed?

This often stated position of Oralloy's about ditching the NPT and openly giving Israel assistance to develop and deploy nuclear weapons is, in my never humble opinion, the most irresponsible and wild-eyed opinion he has ever expressed here. This would be the equivalent of turning up the fire under a simmering pot with caring whether or not the pot will boil over. It is alarming enough to contemplate the possible fate of the Soviet era nuclear weapons and production technology and expertise, nevermind what the scenario would be without the least hint of an attempt to control.

I forget where I read that the aid came from France. I'll see if I can Google up something to refresh my memory.

For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.

In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.

On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.

Both the scale of the project and the secrecy involved made the construction of Dimona a massive undertaking. A new intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons,(LEKEM) was created to provide security and intelligence for the project. At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.

Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.

At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.

The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."

There followed two decades in which the United States, through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program. As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact.

United States inspectors visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, but they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control over the timing and agenda of the visits. The Israelis went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.

Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, the bomb program's crucial years, primarily saw his job as being to insulate the President from facts which might compel him to act on the nuclear issue, alledgedly saying at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news." After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachés' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona. Even when Barbour did authorize forwarding information, as he did in 1966 when embassy staff learned that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads in missiles, the message seemed to disappear into the bureaucracy and was never acted upon.

Well, I remember reading how Israel fooled our inspections of their reactor site by building entire brick walls in front of critical areas inside the building before our inspections and then tearing them down after we were gone.

I don't think that would have been necessary if we'd been helping them.

What treaties have we violated?

Here's a letter from FAS scientists which seems to me a rather more prudent path than what you advocate, oralloy. http://fas.org/intt2006/X3e_FDC01218.pdf

the mind set of the Soviets and the USA during the "COLD WAR". Both had massive Nuclear Missles aimed at each other ( and may still have some in that posture)

ragman(orig) wrote:

out of curiousity, how can Netanyahu state what USA will do?

He cant determine the future but he can say as he did that he wanted the USA to attack Iran. He said that in a radio 4 interview (BBC Today programme) about 10 days ago. When asked about attacking Iran he said clearly that in his opinion it was a question of "division of labour", in other words Israel is quite happy attacking Lebanon and maybe Syria but only in an effort to provide a pretext for the United States to destroy Iran's nuclear industry. Israel does not want war with Iran. They have to live as near neighbours. They just want the US to destroy the capability of Iran producing nuclear weapons...(actually it will only ever delay it, not destroy it, if that what the iranians really want to do).

The Americans of course are desperate for regime change in Tehran. They want to
a. ensure middle east oil is secure, and
b. to protect the dollar from an Iranian oil bourse trading in euros.

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What treaties have we violated?

Quite aside from the numerous treaties with native American groups...

Conventions against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

for starters

Thank You, Oralloy for your specifics.

Having lived through most of the "Cold War", I must say that I am not worried about the Russians--They, at least, operate on a basis of rationality.

But I am very concerned about the fundamentalist Islamo-fascist murderers, typified by the political leaders in Iran who actually believe in the necessity of some kind of an Apocaplyse before the return of the Twelfth Iman!

There is no diplomatic solution to be had with such madmen!!

blatham wrote:

Here's a letter from FAS scientists which seems to me a rather more prudent path than what you advocate, oralloy. http://fas.org/intt2006/X3e_FDC01218.pdf

They seem to oppose the proposed arrangement to bring India's power reactors under IAEA inspections. That seems an odd position. They'd prefer India's power reactors were unsupervised?

blatham wrote:

Quote:

What treaties have we violated?

Quite aside from the numerous treaties with native American groups...

Conventions against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

for starters

I can see the first two, but how are we violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?

Now cited as evidence of weapons activity, facility was provided by the USA to the Shah's government.
[...]
The U.S. provided the reactor when America was eager to prop up the shah, who also was aligned against the Soviet Union at the time. After the Islamic revolution toppled the shah in 1979, the reactor became a reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally can become tomorrow's threat.
Also missing from the current debate over Iran's nuclear intentions is emerging evidence that its research program may be more troubled than previously known.

The Bush administration has portrayed the program as a sophisticated operation that has skillfully hid its true mission of making the bomb. But in the case of the Tehran Research Reactor, a study by a top Iranian scientist suggests otherwise.

After a serious accident in 2001 at the U.S.-supplied reactor, the scientist concluded that poor quality control at the facility was a "chronic disease." Problems included carelessness, sloppy bookkeeping and a staff so poorly trained that workers had a weak understanding of "the most basic and simple principles of physics and mathematics," according to the study, presented at an international nuclear conference in 2004 in France.

The Iranian scientist, Morteza Gharib, told the Tribune that management of the facility had improved in the past three years. When asked whether sloppiness at the reactor might have contributed to some of Iran's troubles with the IAEA, Gharib wrote in an e-mail: "It is always possible, for any system, to commit infractions inadvertently due to lack of proper bookkeeping."

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Harvard University, said bungling might be to blame for some infractions, but the Iranians clearly concealed major nuclear activities, such as building a facility to enrich uranium. "This was not an oversight," he said.

Another overlooked concern about the Tehran reactor is the weapons-grade fuel the U.S. provided Iran in the 1960s--about 10 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the most valuable material to bombmakers. It is still at the reactor and susceptible to theft, U.S. scientists familiar with the situation said.
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