As for the spares, the Iranians themselves are talking about running these devices pretty much flat-out 24x7, in order to produce a usable amount as quickly as possible. I'm not an engineer, but I have a hard time believeing those systems were meant for that kind of abuse. After a certain amount of time, those centrifuges will start to wear - if they're lucky, it won't result in a catastophic release of radioactive material... I wouldn't lose any tears over the people responsible, but a crash like that could irradiate a large chunk of city...

And finally, technical skill is only one aspect of Iran's project - they still need extremely precise design and manufacturing facilities to produce those devices in-country, especially if you want to get weapons-grade products.

or just the ~30% pure stuff needed for reactor fuel.

Most Pressurized Water Reactors use 3.5-4% enrichment, so your numbers are way off.

And 2000 sets of spares for 165 running machines is absurd. And why are Iranians comsidered incapable of building their own, given their tremendous numbers of trained engineers and scientists from Western Universities dating back to the Shah's time?

My view is the availability of electricity to power Uranium enrichment devices is what the Iranians lack. The American facilities were sited at Oak Ridge (TVA) and Hanford (Bonneville) for the availability of electricity. Enrichment takes a tremendous amount of electricity, and Iran today produces less electicity today than the USA in 1945.

Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions... said Iran would push quickly to put 54,000 centrifuges on line â?? a vast increase from the 164 the Iranians said Tuesday that they had used to enrich uranium to levels that could fuel a nuclear reactor.

They _want_ to run 54000. They _seem_ to have 164 now (but that number hasn't been confirmed outside Iranian press releases, so it could just be smoke as well). Unnamed western analysts don't think they can meet their goals.

Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new Iranian claims "little more than vacuous political posturing" meant to promote Iranian nationalism and a global sense of atomic inevitability.

I think we all agree there's a lot of Iranian posturing in this affair.

The nuclear experts said Iran's claim yesterday that it would mass-produce 54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted, the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

So, they've been rattling this saber for awhile now, and experts still don't think they have a lot of high-precision manufacturing capability for this kind of gear.

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.

So it took 28 years for Iran to get to the point of making low-grade reactor fuel with (perhaps) 164 centrifuges. And nobody seems to think they have the ability to build centrifuges able to make weapons-grade uranium.

Mr. Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security said he was not surprised that the Iranians had got a group of 164 centrifuges up and running and had begun to introduce uranium gas into them for enrichment.

"There's still a lot they have to do," he said, to perfect the operation of the cascade of centrifuges. A report that he and his colleagues made public late last month suggested that Iran would need 6 to 12 months to master that process, and Mr. Albright said in an interview that he stood by that rough estimate as accurate.

His March report said Iran had parts for perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 centrifuges beyond the ones already in operation, and that Iran is not likely to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon until 2009 at the earliest.

So they _might_ have enough parts to build 2000 more centrifuges. But that estimate: doesn't take into account spares for breakage and wear-and-tear, doesn't take into account the complexity of managing that large a 'cascade' operation, and doesn't specify whether the centrifuges are able to make the 80%-90%+ pure uranium needed for a weapon or just the ~30% pure stuff needed for reactor fuel.

So the conclusion I come to is that Iran can't do a whole lot on their own yet - if they really want to join the a-bomb club, they're going to have to get (or have already gotten) outside assistance. That bloody well ought to be hard to hide. Have I missed anything?

Why us? Because we�re the only ones with the ability to project appreciable power beyond our borders.

And the will. Assuming we do, in fact, still have that.

Uh, guys, the Manhattan Porject was started in 1939 with the Einstein-Szilard letter to Roosevelt and detonated, yes detonated, a nuke in less than 6 years.

Ten years?!

Why us? Because we're the only ones with the ability to project appreciable power beyond our borders.

Look, I don't recommend, suggest, propose, or look forward to military action against Iran. But ruling it out categorically is counter-productive.

I wonder why Arvosis and company are suddenly so confident in the predictive powers of our intelligence apparatus?

Right, let's bomb them now. While we're at it, we better get North Korea. Hell, the French are getting a bit surly too--why not bomb them, too? They will be an easy target since they "simply lack the ability to project power."

Now that Bush capitulated to India, fueling the nuclear arms race between them and Pakistan, we probably should bomb them both, for good measure.