From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 22:46:40 MST
Without being alarmist, because this will likely not be an end of human
civilization; we are going to have to path thru an ugly epoch. The Iraq War
2, will be simple enough. More significantly will be somehow containing North
Korea, and now Iran. I leave it up to you if negotiation is possible, and
achievable in light of North Korea's abandonment of the 1994 agreement, with
the Clinton administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2677-2003Mar9.html
<<By Joby Warrick and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 10, 2003; Page A01
Near the town of Natanz in central Iran, 160 newly minted centrifuges stand
in neat rows inside a nuclear complex that the United States and other
countries were surprised to learn about only seven months ago. The machines
have been tested and judged fully operational, senior Bush administration
officials say. Sometime this year they will begin spinning hot uranium gas
into nuclear fuel.
In a nearby building, workers are assembling parts for 1,000 more
centrifuges, part of a constellation of 5,000 machines that will be linked
together in a vast uranium enrichment plant now under construction. When the
project is completed in 2005, Iran will be capable of producing enough
enriched uranium for several nuclear bombs each year.
Details about the Natanz complex are beginning to trickle out following the
first visit to the site by officials from the United Nations late last month.
U.S. officials who were briefed on the visit described Iran's progress last
week as "startling" and "eye-opening," so much so that intelligence agencies
are being forced to dramatically shorten estimates for when Iran may acquire
nuclear weapons.
But equally striking is the extent to which Iran's breakthrough caught the
United States and others by surprise. For a decade, U.S. efforts to keep
nuclear weapons away from Iran focused on a location far to the south, a
nuclear power plant being built with Russian help near the port city of
Bushehr. Fearing that Iran would extract plutonium from the reactor's fuel
for a nuclear weapon, U.S. officials have imposed sanctions against Russian
companies and exerted enormous pressure on Russia, China and Ukraine to
prevent them from supplying the project with sensitive equipment and
know-how.
All along, the Tehran government was quietly pursuing a different course,
U.S. officials now say. While not foreclosing the possibility of
plutonium-based bombs, they report, Iran built a clandestine and highly
sophisticated nuclear infrastructure that would allow it to seek
uranium-based weapons.>>
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