Word: weaponeering
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...enrich its uranium covertly, slowing the process. A country with civilian nuclear plants could choose to reprocess spent atomic fuel into plutonium, which can also be used for bombmaking. That would require the construction of a separate reprocessing facility. You need to be smart enough to actually design a weapon, but as Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, "If you can make fissile material, you can make a warhead...
First, the good news. To go nuclear, you need three things: a) the raw material, b) the ability to turn the raw material into a weapon and c) the missiles with which to deliver the weapon. Regarding a and c, Iran is proceeding with alacrity and determination on uranium enrichment (with 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges running) and on the development and testing of long-range missiles. It is the intermediate step--weaponizing the uranium into a bomb--that the intelligence estimate tells us has been suspended...
...Ephraim Halevy, ex-chief of Mossad and now an academic, tells TIME that what hasn't changed, is that the view - reiterated in the NIE - that Iran is "capable of producing a nuclear weapon." He adds, "You put that together with Iran's devious ways and evasive tactics with the U.N. atomic inspectors, and you have a very real threat." Dr. Ephraim Kam, Deputy Director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, concurs. "Even if it's true that Iran has shut down its military nuclear program, it can start it up at any time...
...carry in their warheads. "Nothing has changed at all," Rick Lehner, the Pentagon's chief missile-defense spokesman, said Wednesday. "There has been no impact to our plans for a European deployment, because our missile-defense program is not geared to any kind of specific defense against a specific weapon." It all gets back to "delivery systems," as military geeks call missiles. "It's a defense against ballistic missiles, which can carry a variety of weapons," Lehner explains. "Chemical, biological, high-explosive, and nuclear, of course...
President George W. Bush urged America's allies Tuesday to keep the pressure on Iran despite the U.S. intelligence having concluded that Tehran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003. "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush told a press conference in Washington. "The best way to ensure that the world is peaceful in the future is for the international community to continue to work together to say to the Iranians: 'We are going to isolate...