I offer the following as a physics & engineering based reality check that I strongly encourage you to consider, but *not* to publish:
Re. your remark that "Nuclear bombs need the uranium to be enriched to 95 percent, typically. Iran is not yet able to achieve that level of enrichment, and says it is not trying to."
As I've mentioned, enrichment, roughly speaking, multiplies the concentration of U235 by a small factor in each step, therefore enriching from 0.7% (in natural uranium) to 20% is most of the way to 95% in terms of what is called "separation work". You don't have to take my word for this; it's commonplace engineering knowledge.
Note that, as this suggests, enriching from 20% to 95% requires nothing but feeding enriched material into additional passes through the same centrifuge equipment that's been used to enrich from 0.7% to 20%. In this sense, and contrary to a natural reading of your remark, Iran *is* "able to achieve that level of enrichment".
That said, enrichment is still a slow process, and close-enough international monitoring could ensure that high-enriched reactor fuel does, in fact, go into reactors and stay there (etc. -- there are further requirements).
Note also that even minute traces of higher-enriched uranium can be detected by mass spectroscopy of samples of dust, soil, and so on; this may (or may not) be an important constraint on confidence in the ability to keep a program secret.
The technical details of monitoring are outside my field of competence, and you may wish to engage someone more knowledgeable than me to give you a crisper qualitative understanding of what would be needed -- how open Iran would have to be, and to what intensity of inspection, to provide a given level of confidence in a specific level of constraint on potential weapons production. I think that you could and should be better informed in this area.
I offer these comments in the service of encouraging *rock-solid* reality-based arguments for your much-appreciated views re. going to war. I hope that this comment looks nothing like concern trolling, and again, I don't suggest that you publish it. In one sense, it is off topic.
Please don’t take too seriously the idea that a rising sea may quench passions over low-lying lands. Consider sea level vs. the topography of the Netherlands, both historically and in light of modern construction techniques.
"all the various sources of oil we have in the United States, we could literally replace the Iranian oil"
....And the Gingrich idea is that increasing US oil production will (somehow) reduce the marginal cost of buying oil in the US below the world market level?
Or is the Gingrich idea that an incremental increase in US production will (somehow) markedly decrease world prices?
Or just that producing oil (everywhere) becomes more profitable at a higher world price?
Either way, the idea is absurd or irrelevant to Iran.
Europe and the US buy from the world market. Iran sells to the world market.
The convenience of shipping part of the (fungible) world oil supply from a nearby location (e.g., from Iran to Europe, or from Texas to Illinois) is 99% irrelevant -- unless there's a threat of a tight, military blockade on oil shipments to the US (!).
I offer the following as a physics & engineering based reality check that I strongly encourage you to consider, but *not* to publish:
Re. your remark that "Nuclear bombs need the uranium to be enriched to 95 percent, typically. Iran is not yet able to achieve that level of enrichment, and says it is not trying to."
As I've mentioned, enrichment, roughly speaking, multiplies the concentration of U235 by a small factor in each step, therefore enriching from 0.7% (in natural uranium) to 20% is most of the way to 95% in terms of what is called "separation work". You don't have to take my word for this; it's commonplace engineering knowledge.
Note that, as this suggests, enriching from 20% to 95% requires nothing but feeding enriched material into additional passes through the same centrifuge equipment that's been used to enrich from 0.7% to 20%. In this sense, and contrary to a natural reading of your remark, Iran *is* "able to achieve that level of enrichment".
That said, enrichment is still a slow process, and close-enough international monitoring could ensure that high-enriched reactor fuel does, in fact, go into reactors and stay there (etc. -- there are further requirements).
Note also that even minute traces of higher-enriched uranium can be detected by mass spectroscopy of samples of dust, soil, and so on; this may (or may not) be an important constraint on confidence in the ability to keep a program secret.
The technical details of monitoring are outside my field of competence, and you may wish to engage someone more knowledgeable than me to give you a crisper qualitative understanding of what would be needed -- how open Iran would have to be, and to what intensity of inspection, to provide a given level of confidence in a specific level of constraint on potential weapons production. I think that you could and should be better informed in this area.
I offer these comments in the service of encouraging *rock-solid* reality-based arguments for your much-appreciated views re. going to war. I hope that this comment looks nothing like concern trolling, and again, I don't suggest that you publish it. In one sense, it is off topic.
Please don’t take too seriously the idea that a rising sea may quench passions over low-lying lands. Consider sea level vs. the topography of the Netherlands, both historically and in light of modern construction techniques.
"all the various sources of oil we have in the United States, we could literally replace the Iranian oil"
....And the Gingrich idea is that increasing US oil production will (somehow) reduce the marginal cost of buying oil in the US below the world market level?
Or is the Gingrich idea that an incremental increase in US production will (somehow) markedly decrease world prices?
Or just that producing oil (everywhere) becomes more profitable at a higher world price?
Either way, the idea is absurd or irrelevant to Iran.
Europe and the US buy from the world market. Iran sells to the world market.
The convenience of shipping part of the (fungible) world oil supply from a nearby location (e.g., from Iran to Europe, or from Texas to Illinois) is 99% irrelevant -- unless there's a threat of a tight, military blockade on oil shipments to the US (!).
Crazy indeed.