An Act of War – Will Iran Respond?
(San Francisco) – Iran’s publicly avowed goal, stated world wide, is to go into the uranium fuel rod business, not build nuclear weapons. That is reflected in the uranium enrichment equipment Iran owns and operates. President Ahamadinejad is regularly seen proclaiming this all over the world in a concerted Iranian effort to steal away nuclear reactor fuel rod customers from the US or France.
The deadly serious CIA partnered with the equally lethal assassins in the Israeli Intelligence service, the Mossad, take the Iranians at their word. So do I. Actions mean everything in the nuke business, words mean nothing. Words are just fluff for a gullible public.
That said, there is no way the US, France or Israel will allow Iran to go into the uranium fuel rod business. Absolutely No, NON, Lo, Nyet, Nein, Zip, Negative, not going to happen. There are powerful differences of opinion here between America and Iran. Wars have been fought over less.
As far as the US is concerned it is just a little bit uncool and not too good of an idea for a non-client state to attempt to make nuclear weapons. This will cause a serious inter-governmental “talking-to” and a big “maybe” response is almost guaranteed. Various high level political appointees will discuss it for years in “retreats” at posh resorts all over the world. It is a good gig if you can get it.
US politicians will drone on endlessly about the “proliferation” of nuclear weapons on all the best Sunday morning radio and TV talk shows. Corporate paid columnists using acres of newsprint are free to discuss the pros and cons endlessly. They call it Free Speech.
It is absolutely Verbotten, or Forbidden, however, for a Muslim State to try to enter the international nuclear fuel rod monopoly. This is Very Serious and runs a high risk of US Marines breaking down your door. Unless, of course, it is in the interests of the United States for the country to do so and US corporate interests are part of the deal and the profits.
To enter the uranium fuel rod market a country requires thousands of centrifuges; “baby” centrifuges to make uranium reactor fuel or really stout centrifuges to spin up bomb grade Uranium 235. Of course, the bomb grade centrifuges can do both functions; but, it is not very cost efficient.
What is a Centrifuge?
I asked Geek dot com “What is a Centrifuge?” The straightforward answer was in part: “A centrifuge is any number of devices that spin at a high speed to press objects outward with centrifugal force. It is easy to see centrifugal force by performing a simple experiment. Fill a bucket half way full with water. A large tumbler will work as well, but it isn’t as easy to use. Now you have a basic centrifuge.”
The WiseGeek article continues: “Find a clear space where you won’t hit anything or anyone with your centrifuge. With your arm at your side, quickly spin it in a circle, up over your head and back down to the ground. The centrifugal force created by spinning the bucket or tumbler will keep the water inside. This is a simple example of a centrifuge.”
Further down the page a regular, non-geek person points out that a washing machine is a centrifuge. A clothes basket with holes in it for the escaping water spins around a water tight enclosure, open at the top, to separate the water from the clothes.
A Whirlpool Model “WTW4800XQ 27” Top-Load Washer with 3.5 cu. ft. Capacity” clothes washer spins the 19 in diameter clothes basket at 700 RPM or 39.56 MPH during the Spin cycle. Imagine the same clothes washer spinning at the speed of sound at sea level. The clothes basket would slightly exceed 17,386.2 RPM.
The poor old washing machine would fly apart long before that, especially if it was filled with about the heaviest chunks of metal on this planet. Now imagine a Big laundromat with 956 of the screaming washing machines all coming apart and shooting pieces of shrapnel at the others about the same time. The dying machines are also spewing radioactive metal all over the room. Somebody could get killed.
Would you volunteer to go inside the highly radioactive room for a clean up detail? Would you go if you were handsomely paid to do so? Just how long do you think you would live before you died of radiation and heavy metal poisoning?
Enter the CIA and Mossad
Time now for the CIA and Mossad Computer Hackers – big time Cyber Warfare experts. This century’s government financed business protection scheme.
The United States’ CIA and the Israeli Mossad labored in tandem for years to concoct and test a computer virus from Hell at the secret Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory in the Israeli Negev Desert. It is called the Stuxnet computer worm. Its job was to kill the Iranian uranium fuel rod making business in a scenario like that outlined below. It was unleashed in September, 2010.
The CIA/Mossad plot was a brilliant, well planned and executed strike on the nuclear fuel rod uranium processing, German Siemens computer controllers in the heart of the Iranian nuclear complex. In earlier, simpler times it would have been called an act of war.
The EU’s cyber security agency has warned that the enigmatic and deadly Stuxnet worm represents a “paradigm shift” in digital warfare. “Stuxnet is a new class and dimension of malware. The attackers [clearly] invested a substantial amount of time and money to build such a complex attack tool,” explained ENISA executive director Dr. Udo Helmbrecht.
“[I would compare it to] the arrival of an F-35 fighter jet on a World War I battlefield…[It is obviously] much superior to anything ever seen before, and to what was assumed possible.” German computer security expert Ralph Langner opined in a recent report quoted by the Jerusalem Post.
Iran operated at least 3,000 baby uranium fuel making Centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly states Iran’s goal is to run 56,000 uranium fuel rod grade centrifuges and has done so openly all over the world.
That’s plenty of centrifuges to make uranium fuel for reactors everywhere. He’s like a used car salesman soliciting business. The US and France carefully take note of his brash solicitations of their monopolized customer base.
Recently South Africa booted the French out of South Africa the day before they were to sign a contract for up to six of France’s troubled Experimental DoubleWide Reactors under construction in Finland and Normandy. Both are years behind schedule and billions of Euros over budget.
By contrast, the US and their favored nuclear corporations own and operate 3,000 big, hefty Bomb Grade uranium centrifuges. These big boy centrifuges are capable of spinning one of the heaviest metals in the world at the supersonic speeds necessary to separate and produce radioactive uranium material for nuclear bombs. It is, of course, the fissile isotope Uranium 235.
The differences between the two centrifuges are formidable. The differences between a child’s tricycle and Formula One or NASCAR race cars come to mind. All have wheels; but, that is about the only similarity.
A large and influential American newspaper syndicate, that of the New York Times, charges, without justification or IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) confirmation, the Iranian centrifuges are to make Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons – not uranium fuel for reactors.
Nuke Bomb talk immediately gets the attention of the American people and American politicians. Nuclear bomb talk by “officials” always sucks all the oxygen out of a room and immediately sidelines talk of fixing schools and the potholes in the streets.
America remains the only country in the world to actually USE nuclear weapons on people in a war – on what turned out to be civilian targets, too. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Americans remain spooky about nuke bomb talk. Nuclear policy makers follow with their cold gaze as Iran is targeted in the nerve centers of the American nuclear war capabilities – the eight nuclear weapons labs, the Pentagon and the New York Times.
We are informed, from people who should know those sorts of things, that Iran does not have the tools necessary to build nuke weapons; what’s more, that Iran can’t buy them or steal them. These are not minor or inconsequential items. One essential component part is tons of high quality Melange Steel. It is an Internationally Banned Transaction to sell any of it to Iran.
The Iranians have even tried carbon fiber for centrifuges as a substitute for Steel. Nope, Carbon Fiber won’t work for the big centrifuges. No way, it takes a very specialized high grade steel to withstand the extreme abuse of the big centrifuges.
The “P-1” or first level centrifuges Iran owns are toys compared to the bigger, stronger, bomb grade melange steel centrifuges. The little ones can spin till Dooms Day; but, 5% grade Uranium 235 fuel rods are the best they will ever do. That doesn’t even come within spittin’ distance of the 90 percent plus pure Uranium 235 required for a nuclear weapon.
“Why not?”
The faster a centrifuges spins, the stronger it must be. The heavier the load in a centrifuge is, the stronger it must be. There are few rocks or chunks of metal heavier that uranium. There are few substances, if any, more abrasive than fast moving uranium sand.
Bomb grade uranium centrifuges spin at more than 700 mph, or 1,126 kmph, with a load containing one of the heaviest metals on Planet Earth. Those are really heavy uranium BBs moving at supersonic speeds.
The baby centrifuges fly apart and disintegrate at the supersonic plus speeds required to make nuke weapons… and, that is exactly what the CIA/Mossad computer hacker Scam team counted on. The entire multi-million dollar operation was dependent on taking the Iranians exactly at their word – they actually WERE making uranium for reactor fuel rods – not for nuclear weapons.
And truly, that is exactly what the American-Israeli designed Stuxnet Siemens system computer worm did. It was a brilliantly executed act of war or industrial sabotage, depending on your point of view, written for that precise target – that is to say: the toy centrifuges.
To do this, the CIA and Mossad had to know exactly what the centrifuges were and intimate details of their complete operations cycle. In other words, the espionage agencies, knew full well the Iranian centrifuges were for making Low Enriched Uranium, LEU, for reactor fuel and could not possibly be used to construct a nuclear weapon. In fact, they bet the whole Operation on it, that’s how sure of it they were.
Meanwhile, the PR branch of CIA, and their business partners for 65 years at the fully engaged New York Times, or NYT, perfected and pushed the lie that Iran was about to produce a nuclear weapon, or even two.
The story goes something like this: the insane Iranians would build a single small nuclear weapon and immediately fire it at Israel to kill all the Jews they could in one grand; but, hopelessly suicidal gesture. The CIA PR team and the NYT syndicate promote it. Together they have a stunningly effective world wide reach with lots of echo chamber repetition built in.
First off, just like in a Hollywood or Bollywood, India movie script the Stuxnet computer worm recorded hours of normal operations making fuel rod grade uranium. Next, the worm played back the “Normal” operation to the duped Iranian Nuclear Fuel Operators’ on their Monitors for hours. The hoodwinked Operators were completely blind to the mayhem actually going on in the centrifuge rooms.
Situation Critical: CIA Starts the Destructo Sequence.
Under cover of “Normal” Operations playback, the StuxNet computer worm spun the Centrifuges up towards the 700 mph, or 1126 kph, speeds necessary to make weapons grade uranium. Needless to say, the 954 baby centrifuges operating in that Uranium cascade destroyed themselves and disintegrated, just like CIA knew they would. In so doing, the underground room was hopelessly contaminated with radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6).
As a direct result, a likely competitor to the US/French monopoly in uranium fuel rods for Western reactors just “went away,” as the old saying goes.
The ever faithful New York Times then boldly headlined that the Iranian nuclear weapons menace to civilization had been put back a few years. Of course, it was the threat of competition in the nuclear fuel rod business that “went away,” though.
The unmistakable translation to the US and French nuclear insiders in the massively government subsidized and very profitable nuke reactor fuel business was: “Good. You can raise prices on uranium fuel rods now. Uncle Sugar’s hacker crew took out the competition as a multi-billion dollar “gift” to big business! Let’s Get It On! Your pals at CIA/Mossad/NYT. Have a good day.”
A Large Scale Evil that Needs Killin’.
The temptation to act can be overwhelming. The temptation to act on the likes of the CIA-Mossad-NYT lies is one of those occasions where the truth is often blurred. Blurred on purpose, because the people pulling the strings are wanting to make a lot of money quick. That pressure can create an itchy trigger finger in susceptible people. When the weapons were single shot pistols in the Old West in America it was one thing. Two people and maybe a few bystanders might get maimed or killed.
Playing around with tons of uranium hexafloride gas (UF6) is another. This radioactive poison gas can kill millions and go around the world. The stuff never goes away. There is no treatment; there is no cure. The people who order it used in War are criminals. They should be tried with everything all legal, the way it is supposed to be with the rule of law.
But make no mistake about it. These are perps of a Large Scale Evil that will destroy life on Earth. Punishments for War Crimes are severe – Life at Hard Labor or Death – as they should be. Never has any criminal class deserved their just reward more richly.
Related Articles.
“IRAN: Building a Nuclear Weapon? You’re Kidding, Right?” Bob Nichols, August 21, 2010, VeteransToday,
Sources and Notes.
Whirlpool: WTW4800XQ 27” Top-Load Washer with 3.5 cu. ft. Capacity, 8 Cycles, 4 Temperatures, 700 RPM Max Spin Speed, Xtra Roll Action Plus Agitator.
“What is a Centrifuge?” Geek dot com
“RPM convert to MPH?” Yahoo Answers.
“‘StuxNet specifically targeted Iranian nuclear program’,” JPost Staff, 11/20/2010
Bob is a long-standing senior fellow with VT Foreign Policy since 2010. He is also a Project Censored Award winner, a former correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and a frequent contributor to various online publications.
He reports on war, politics, and the two nuclear weapons labs in the Bay Area. Nichols is writing a book based on 20 years of nuclear war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of an Army Ammunition Plant.
Follow Bob on his YouTube channel, Nichols on Nuclear, Twitter, and visit his website YourRadiationThisWeek.org.
You are encouraged to write Nichols at duweapons@gmail.com –
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