Fred Thompson provides his take (warning: could cause drowsiness ) on the Iran NIE over at RedState. I can’t really make out what his point is. It’s a hawkish point of view with some attempts at statesmanlike “perspective.” But in his rambling style he hits on one argument that I suspect we’ll see a lot more of from the Iran hawks:
Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium for allegedly peaceful purposes, but which would allow them to easily transition to a nuclear weapons program at any point in the future. Maybe even now–now that so many seem willing to forget Iran’s past deceptions and ongoing intransigence. After all, a nuclear weapons program is simply an extension of the process by why uranium is enriched for civilian nuclear fuel.
This notion that a civilian nuclear program opens up the whole pandora’s box of nuclear weaponry is the last leg the bomb-Iran-now crowd has left to stand on. I won’t pretend to be a nuclear weapons expert, but my layman’s understanding of nukes is that Thompson and his ilk are just dead wrong. The physics may be the same at some very basic level (the atomic level, I suppose), but weaponization, not to mention delivery systems, is a whole different ballgame from civilian nuclear power production. I’d be interested in hearing more from readers who have expertise in the field.
