Does Iran Have the Know-How to Build the Bomb?

Over the weekend, the New York Times revealed an alarming conclusion by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency: Iran now has enough know-how to put together a workable atomic bomb. That report, the Times hastened to add, is preliminary. But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimate of Iran's bomb-making information goes beyond other assessments made public by several governments.

Yet two key Obama administration aides yesterday ducked questions about whether Iran really has the data to design and build a bomb. "I’m not in a position to characterize that report or our own intelligence," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said on Meet the Press. "There are various assessments and they don’t all align."

Appearing on Face the Nation, National Security Advisor James Jones also downplayed Iran's nuclear knowledge. "Whether they know how to do it or not is a matter of some conjecture," he said. "What we're watching is, 'What is their intent?'"

All this speculation comes at a delicate moment. Iran has agreed to let inspectors visit a newly disclosed enrichment site at Qom on Oct. 25. On a visit yesterday to Tehran, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei (pictured here meeting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), said he saw a shift "“from confrontation into transparency and cooperation.”

What we do know, however, is that the IAEA has already raised concerns about things like Iran's experimentation with high explosives. Here's a key paragraph from the latest IAEA Board of Governors report, made public in September:

Iran has told the Agency that it has experimented with the civil application of simultaneously functioning multiple detonators, and was asked by the Agency to provide it with information which would prove that such work had been for civil and nonnuclear military purposes. Iran has not yet shared that information with the Agency. The Agency would also like to discuss with Iran the possible role that a foreign national with explosives expertise, whose visit to Iran has been confirmed by the Agency, played in explosives development work.

Mastering the design of high-explosive lenses is crucial to the design of an implosion device like the Trinity gadget or the Nagasaki atomic bomb. In addition, the IAEA has also probed Iran's interest in ballistic missile design. In the latest board report, the agency reiterated "the need to hold discussions with Iran on the engineering and modelling studies associated with the re-design of the payload chamber [for a new ballistic missile] ... to exclude the possibility that they were for a nuclear payload."

What we don't know is whether intelligence agencies have more specific information about some of these activities -- say, if someone has tracked down this mysterious "foreign national" with explosives knowledge or obtained the latest blueprints for a re-entry vehicle.

[PHOTO: President.ir]

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