In a new interview Tuesday, US envoy Robert Malley continued to play up the myth of Iran imminently being nuclear armed, claiming to be “alarmed” by the progress made in enrichment by the Iranians.
Malley then went down the always-incorrect, familiar road, claiming Iran could build a bomb within weeks “if it so chooses.” He added that they already have enough uranium.
There are occasions of being wrong, and those of being deliberately misleading, and this could well be the second half. The narrative has enormous holes.
To make a nuclear weapon, Iran would need 90% enriched uranium, weapons-grade. The estimates are for around 15 kg of such uranium per weapon, and Iran has not a single gram, never having even attempted to enrich to such levels.
That makes sense because, to quote Malley, Iran has never chosen to try. Iran’s government has forbidden the production of nuclear arms and subsequently forbids going down this road.
The 15 kg limit is the “breakout” time, which is built on the assumption that Iran could enrich whatever it’s got to 90%+ levels, even though this is not a trivial process.
“If it so chooses” is the cheap cop-out for these accusations, designed to keep fear around Iran’s capabilities without considering if those capabilities exist or are reasonable.
The US could incinerate the world in 15 minutes or so if it wanted to. And everyone should wonder if it wants to. That should be the headline every day.
Nicely stated NHMW!
How about Israel’s undeclared and uninspected nukes ?
Ah, “if it so chooses” is doing a lot of work there. Let’s do what we can to reduce regional tensions so that it does not “so choose” then perhaps? Like ordering a certain loudmouth regional country to stop making so many threats and attacks?
“The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we’re prepared to have that. It’s between Iran and itself. They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal,” Malley said.
It’s like this guy doesn’t know who dropped out the deal or which country was EVER actually in compliance.
How much money Robert Malley has received from Israeli government…?!
So to quote the dude, that is like “just his opinion”. Is he referring to any specific intelligence? Is this merely a statement that since we walked away from the nuclear agreement Iran has built its stocks of low enriched uranium and centrifuges so that it might be possible in a few weeks based on stockpiles and industrial capacity? Maybe we ought to get back into that agreement that had limited the Iranians so well.
I am against nukes but that is not the reality of the world we live in. Having said that, if Iran had nukes, it would level out the playing field, give Israel some PAUSE. That I am in favor of…
How long would it take Israel to make 50 more nukes?
Destbalization is Israeli MO . It has copied USA and lately has been helping USA signficantly to make destablization easier like changing laws ,writing myths,spreading stupidities, planting people like Strammer instead of Corbyn in UK ,and using Trump through Israeli firsters in USA .
This is a great improvement. For the past thirty-something years Iran has been six months away from building a bomb. Now they’ve cut the time down to mere weeks. Maybe in another thirty years Iran will be just days from building a bomb.