At the United Nations this afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sought to clarify an issue that has confounded President Obama for months — where to place “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program — by using one simple, easy-to-read chart:
As you can see, that is a drawing of a bomb. It is divided into three stages. Iran has completed the first stage (amassing enough 70 percent-enriched uranium for a bomb), and, according to Netanyahu, can complete the second stage (amassing enough 90 percent-enriched uranium) as soon as next summer. The key here — and this is important — is to stop Iran before it enters the final stage, i.e. the completion of the bomb. Let’s hope the White House was paying attention.
Of course, the bomb drawing got its share of criticism on Twitter, as BuzzFeed reports:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu punctuated his attempt to rally the international community against Iran’s nuclear program with a crude illustration of a bomb in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York today — a move that drew him an immediate wave of mockery, but also reflected an astute grasp of the changing media climate.
The chart wasn’t unserious, it was simple. And it’s precisely what the public needs to see at this point. The White House has been able to drag their feet on the debate, in part, because they’ve portrayed it as murky and complicated. It isn’t. There will be debates, if and when the time comes, over whether Iran has actually reached the red line, and whether the intelligence is accurate or complete. But there’s no question that a clear and firm line needs to be drawn.
I have feeling that Iran will never finish that bomb.
From your mouth.
What are you babbling about? The reason that Iran will never the bomb is that the Israelis will bomb them into the stone age.
Not everyone shares your confidence in Iran's good sense or survival instincts. Including the PM of Israel.
This part of Mr. Netanyahu's speech is perfect. There has been an undercurrent to the effect that nuclear weapons are difficult for the layman to understand and, consequently, hard to know just what would be needed to prompt intervention. What's more, it always seemed that the information was classified and secret so that the public really didn't know all the facts. There was, it would seem, room for doubt as to the progress of the Iranians in their quest for a nuclear bomb. n nMr. Netanyahu demonstrates that the information about Iran's activities is public, it's not secret or classified information. Rather the information is what the UN already knows and we know if we only pay attention. Next, he shows that the science is straightforward; actually he does more and shows the world that there's no science involved in understanding Iran's progress. It's a simple matter of how much uranium and what level of enrichment. A child could follow that. n nThen, he shows the world where Iran is now, where they are going, and at what point will have Iran gone far. n nHis simple drawing, with a single red marker, tells the world what is happening, how far along the Iranians are, and the point of no return. It's quite brilliant for its simplicity.
I studied Quantum Mechanics under Emilio Segre, partner, good friend, and student of Enrico Fermi. We had a simple, yes simple, homework assignment to determine the shape and size of a mass of nuclear fissionable material that would, simply put, explode as a nuclear bomb. The particular material was specified. Trivial. Trivial except for the anti-Semitic morons in the White House, the Press, and most of the west.
Did I misread Netanyahu's speech today or did most of the MM. By estimating the that Iran will be ready to deliver a bomb by late spring or early summer didn't he indicate an israeli strike against Iran isn't imminent?
The only thing that is crude is the type of bomb depicted, which looks like it came out of a silent film comedy about an anarchist bomb thrower. Would the press have liked the drawing any better if it were tapered with fins at one end and a cone at the other like a WWII aerial bomb instead? I doubt it very much.
OK, atomic bombs aren't detonated with a match lighting a fuse, either. Yes it looks like something that "Willie Coyote" would throw at the "Road Runner" in the cartoons of my childhood. n nAND?!?!?!? n nIt is a really clear graphic for people to understand. Even Obama ought to be able to understand this and the related problems… n nIf I remember correctly, "critical mass" for a sustained fission reaction (i.e. a bomb that goes 'bang') is something like 2.2 Kg. Back in the 1970s, there was a Princeton undergrad who wrote a paper explaining how to build a working atomic bomb for his junior year Physics class — and the DoD classified the paper because the bomb would have worked, even though he only used open source material to do it with. n nThe issue is the stuff and getting it — everything else is academic…
There is one other thing to think about — you don't actually have to have a bomb that will go "bang" (i.e. sustained fission reaction) to cause an awful lot of problems. This stuff is highly radioactive and hence highly lethal in and of itself. n nAll one has to do is spread it around to kill people; worse, as radiation is invisible and one is already mortally injured before the first symptoms appear, it causes psychological panic far beyond its immediate lethal range. This is what the so-called "dirty bomb" is — any form of conventional explosive (e.g. a stick of dynamite) that is coated with the highly radioactive metal — it becomes dust that is spread *everywhere* by the explosion, and then is further spread around. n nIn terms of radiation, this likely would be worse than an actual fission reaction because a good chunk (but by no means all) of the radioactive material split in the actual fission reaction, with more being widely dispersed by the "mushroom cloud" going as high as it did. With the dirty bomb, there is no sustained fission reaction and hence all the highly radioactive stuff is still there, only decomposing by a factor of its half-life — which for U235 is over 700 *million* years… n nScary…..