Arian
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2011
- Messages
- 2,884
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
I don't know what the Iranian authorities are up to, but I doubt it. Western agencies have experts that very well understand the extent of Iran's nuclear program and they have access to the IAEA public and confidential reports. It is widely believed (and rightly so) that Iran is fully capable of developing nuclear weapons, at least old designs. Building a gun-type bomb is within the reach of any nation that has access an advanced enrichment program, if it chooses to acquire nuclear weapons. The technology is so old and well-understood that the United States has already started releasing confidential documents about the Manhattan Project and you can find them online with enough calculations and explanations.
Now there are two groups of people. One group believes that Iran already has nuclear weapons, which fail to come up with a rational explanation as to why Iran keeps its civilian nuclear program in its current futile, insignificant form if it already has nuclear weapons, and the other group which includes people like me that believe that even though Iran can build nuclear weapons from a technological point of view, but the implications and consequences of this decision has prevented the Iranian authorities from pursuing nuclear weapons since 2004. The Iranian decision makers probably think that the repercussions of having nuclear arms would outdo the benefits of having them for the ruling class. After all, the ruling class of Iran continue to have financial and familial interests in the Western countries.
I doubt that Iran has allowed the theft of these documents on purpose. And honestly, I doubt that the majority of these documents that Israel claims it has stolen are anything of importance or significance. Most of the things that Israel will claim in future will be based on confidential IAEA reports and the reports by the US intelligence agencies, particularly the PMD reports of the IAEA from 2008 to 2011. But historically, last time a scenario similar to this happened, it first led to a terrible deal with the E3 in 2004 (which almost completely halted our nuclear program), and later Iran was referred to the UNSC and our economy, which was recovering from the Iraq-Iran war with an impressive pace, was hit with 4 rounds of UNSC sanctions and we were getting closer and closer to Article 42 of Chapter 7 of the United Nations.