Is the Choice Between the “Deal” or War, Period?

 

The working agreement between the P5+1, and primarily President Obama, with the Iranians will in this discussion be referred to as the “Deal” for simplicity’s sake. This Deal has been panned by conservatives and anti-terror specialists as being dangerous and potentially deadly accords. It has been predicted that Iran will easily become a major economic power the equivalent of Saudi Arabia with the infusion of one-hundred-fifty-billion dollars and its resurgence into the oil market even at todays lowered prices, a situation caused by Saudi Arabia pumping oil at near peak levels intending to damage the economies of the Iranians and hurting Russia as well in the interim. The pain caused the Iranians will be offset by the cash infusion. The one thing we can be thankful for the warning but feel accursed by the aimed for results was the announcement after the signing of the Deal by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that his intentions are to utilize the cash infusion to resupply and rearm his terror proxies to levels believed impossible until a few days ago with the announcement of the Deal crafter by the Iranian demands and the quickness with which Secretary of State Kerry (to be referred to as ‘SKerry’ through the remainder of the article) revealed to be at the orders of President Obama, folded his hand and capitulated to every command and refusal to accept any limitations or requirements upon Iran thus in the final weeks of negotiations surrendering virtually every gain pressed forth through great efforts by the rest of the P5+1 from Iran. There was a glimmer of hope against hope that the Deal might crumble at the last minute due to the honor and integrity shown earlier in the negotiations when the initial framework was decided before the initial six-month pushback of the deadline for producing an agreement when the French Foreign Minister vetoed the framework only to be pressed by President Obama and his minions with a small cosmetic change in the phrasing of a minor item was made as the reason for the French veto though most believed the problems were more systemic than that one minor, insignificant item which was altered.

 

Back to the question at hand; is the Choice Between the “Deal” or War? One item which has to be brought into the consideration is some of the terms as far as items to be provided to Iran by the United States or other members of the P5+1 or any other entities. We have heard that the United States will be providing additional cyber protection with a mentioned direction of protecting the entirety of the Iranian nuclear research, development and particularly their enrichment program from interference, especially from Israeli cyber capabilities above and beyond other cyber assaults. There has been mention that President Obama through his lackey SKerry promised the Iranians that they could expect United States to provide air security both from the ground in Iraq as well as from the naval taskforce including, if necessary, from the aircraft deployed from the carrier in the Arabian Gulf. This guarantee appears to include, as some reports have stated, shooting down Israeli fighters should the situation demand such, and the expressed targeting of Israeli forces was exactly as heard. How much further to the other side the Administration will stray from the normative distance it has shown former allies making them into potentially targets of United States military assets is far beyond anything expected by any number of Americans who voted for President Obama, particularly my Jewish friends.

 

What does this paint for the future for Israel? Israel can feel a little less alone in her neighborhood as Egypt and Saudi Arabia along with their allies along the gulf coast are all in the same sinking boat right now. Unfortunately this situation will not aid Israel immensely. Where Saudi Arabia and Egypt might be cooperating, Israel should not expect any overt or announced cooperation from her new friends or even any thanks should Israel take actions which prevent Iranian production of nuclear weapons. Should the United States have actually sent orders to their military to intercept any attack on Iran, that could make any attack on Iran extremely problematic. By now Israel will hopefully have figured out that informing the United States of their intents is not tactically the brightest move available. This causes more problems than many might realize as there are numerous Israelis both within the IDF and within the government who believe it is their specific responsibility to announce every move to the corresponding department within the American government. This would require that care be taken on who might be trusted with any information and orders which were given to implement actions against the Iranian nuclear sites. Any such attempt to neutralize the Iranian nuclear sites had best be discussed with trustworthy advisors alone and should be tested as one of a number of potential interventions when being discussed with people having knowledge of the Iranian government and their expected and especially unexpected reactions and in plane plans made to address any resultant actions by Iran and her many allies and proxies. Further, Israeli intelligence should be on alert to find out the plans by any other actors as Iran has promised a reign of terror upon Israel should any attack be taken on their nuclear programs or any other resources within Iran.

 

The brilliance displayed by President Obama and his advisors which has been displayed through such exercises and actual events as Benghazi which was determined to be a response to a YouTube Video with about five thousand views before it was referenced by the Administration. There was the success of President Obama’s brilliant collapsing of al-Qaeda and how “stable governments” were taking form and President Obama gave as the prime example Yemen which burst into civil war overthrowing the “stable government” and forced to flee the Capital and head to the next largest city where two or three days later they were forced to flee again and have barely been heard from since. But we have heard from Iran and their arming of the Houthis and we have heard from Saudi Arabia which is supporting any entity which stands against the Iranian proxies, the Houthis. It is almost as if the Iranians are seeking anywhere and everywhere to make President Obama look the fool, but he and Secretary SKerry are too busy strutting their stuff purporting the great Deal they made and how it will prevent any need for a war to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. The Deal puts that the probability for setting the date for an Iranian nuclear weapon to be about a decade from now, give or take two, three or four years assuming that Iran gets caught in the web of intrigue and becomes entangled in all the minutia placed there to prevent an Iran desperate to please the West and the United States and Israel in particular but is absolutely useless against an Iran that intends to bull rush straight through any supposed restrictions in the Deal.

 

When asked what would happen if Iran simply took the one-hundred-fifty-billion dollars which are being released and used the improved centrifuge plans provided and open some undeclared enrichment laboratories in order to build nuclear weapons, warheads to be exact, with intent to make their warheads clandestinely and quickly; the administration replied with stunned disbelief stuttered slowly, but the Deal does not permit such actions and how dare you cast doubts about the Deal as it is a good deal fashioned for a good people to obey its restrictions and Iran had promised to abide by its restrictions. There appears to be a mental disconnect between President Obama and Secretary SKerry making them incapable of addressing any potential shortcomings of their deal and how it may prove completely impossible at restraining any government which practices subterfuge and dishonesty as stark principles reminiscent of the Germans after the Munich Agreement of 1938 which inevitably led to war within two years as Germany had since then annexed Austria, absorbed the rest of Czechoslovakia, and proceeded to make the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreement with Russia by which the two powers invaded hapless Poland from opposite ends and met in the middle thus starting World War II.

 

Iran will not need to make any additional agreements as they have sufficient agreements in place to provide them with control of a large crescent starting at the Indian Ocean and cutting a swath of land passing through the Middle East passing through Iran, southern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and ending in the Mediterranean Sea. Currently Syria is in remission but the cash spigot is about to come wide open and as promised by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his friends will be rearmed and strengthened and will soon have all the necessary weapons and assistance to take the offensive. Add to this the promises from President Obama to provide a wall of protection both in the virtual domain and in the realm of the real where he promises have been made to prevent any and all assaults mounted, in particular, by Israel or any of her new-found allies. Of course by now the farthest reaching terms of the Deal have reached all those who have been waiting anxious to begin to understand what threats may be coming their way and if so, how long do they have to prepare. For Saudi Arabia, they know already that they have zero time as the fighting is on their southern and northern borders with the Yemeni Houthis fighting the Sunnis on their southern border and Iraqi Shia forces tangling with the Islamic State and Iranian backed and augmented Iraqi units facing off. Where most of the fighting has been between Shia and Sunni forces Iran has been known to finance Sunni groups as long as they did not bring any shame upon Iran, something amazingly enough accomplished by Hamas as Iran has cut their relations with Hamas, a blessing we would rather just accept and be thankful for small favors. Many of the groups and states supported by Iran is done simply to further the spread of the ideology and dogma of Shiite Islam and to bring as many misguided Islamic Sunni souls into the embracing arms of Shiite Islam and there is the we have the struggle of the ages. But in addition to this struggle there are the other tactical struggles. Iran desires to amass to themselves the rich oil fields of southern and central Iraq, the Saudi oil fields as well as the oil fields of the Gulf States including any offshore drilling. Additionally Iran believed that the time has arrived that the Shiite form of Islam becomes the dominant form supplanting Sunni through conversion by way of persuasion initially and by force if that becomes necessary. The Iranians also know the importance in geography and in particular of choke points. In that desire Iran definitely has desires to take control of both sides of the Straits of Hormuz, they seek ownership of Oman and the United Arab Emirates and for control of Bab el Mandeb Straits which is fueling much of their desire to have the Houthis control Yemen and be holding to Iran for their victories.

 

Meanwhile, the problem facing Israel as well as much of the Sunni Islamic world, though few would be capable of doing much about Iranian hegemony, is the prevention of permitting Iran to attain nuclear weapons and in particular what is referred to as weaponized delivery systems, a long way of saying miniaturized warheads. The reason for this is two-fold; the first being the obvious in that a rocket is limited in range by three factors, the first is the amount of fuel it can hold which is pretty much set by its initial design, second is the efficiency of the rocket motor, which consists of the combustion chamber, the valves, the atomizer, and some complex combinations in sizes and diameters which is called rocket science for a reason, and finally the weight of the warhead. This is where miniaturizing brings home the benefits as the weight of the warhead is by far the easiest part of a rocket or missile that the user can address. If we have a warhead that weights one-kilogram and a rocket which can hold one-kilogram then that is the limit you can arm said rocket with. But if you can miniaturize the warhead with a superior design which brings its weight down to three-hundred grams then you can place three warheads on that rocket and because that still allows for one-hundred additional grams that are not going to be used then the range of the rocket or missile just increased by almost ten percent, not that would be something as your miniaturization had tripled the capacity of the device’s damage capacity but also increased the range of the weapons package. This is where Iran will need to develop its technology as, just because you can produce a nuclear device does not necessarily mean one can deliver the weapon efficiently and here size and weight are the twin kings, especially if the intent is to place warheads atop missiles or within aircraft.

 

The best example of the difference is that the initial bombs the United States dropped on Japan to end World War II were huge in size by today’s standards. Their names were Little Boy (a uranium gun-type atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945) and Fat Man (a plutonium implosion-type bomb on the city of Nagasaki on August 9) both of which took a Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft. The Enola Gay, named after its Pilot Colonel Paul W. Tibbets’ mother carried Little Boy to its target of Hiroshima while, like William Dawes who was the other rider with Paul Revere and who actually made the warnings as Revere was captured by the British but Dawes proved too difficult to rhyme so it became “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” and not William Dawes, while the B-29 named Bockscar piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney whose plane was not named after either of his parents, carried Fat Man over Nagasaki. Each of these atomic bombs had yields under twenty-thousand-kilograms of TNT (Trinitrotoluene C6H2(NO2)3CH3) which is considered quite low compared with modern thermonuclear devices which carry yields measured in Mega-tons of TNT yet are so much smaller than the original devices that if a B-29 were to carry modern weapons they could carry numerous bombs each with multiple warheads though the plane would likely not be capable of flying high enough and fast enough to clear the area before detonation though with a lighter load it might have a prayer’s chance.

 

Silverplate B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, named after its Pilot Colonel Paul W. Tibbets’ mother, carried Little Boy to its target of Hiroshima

 

Silverplate B-29 Superfortress Bockscar of the 509th Composite Group which dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney

 

Silverplate B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay with Pilot Col Paul Tibbets, named after its Pilot Colonel Paul W. Tibbets’ mother carried Little Boy to its target of Hiroshima historic picture og man and his aircraft

 

 

So, even should Iran detonate a trial nuclear bomb, depending on its yield, it could be determined what variety of device was detonated and what the intended use might be. A really low yield but leaving a high gamma radiation signature would signal they had developed an EMP bomb used to knock out electronic grids and sensitive electronics rendering entire weapons systems useless, especially those dependent on radar from ground based systems such as any aircraft batteries and other targeting systems as well as most command and control as they are dependent on computers and communications networks, both systems very vulnerable to an EMP attack. Such a device could spell a real disaster for most nations but mostly the United States or Europe as both societies are heavily dependent on communications for their economy, computers for their investment and banking systems, their electrical grids for refrigeration and for hospital equipment, and for supplying virtually everything as the majority of vehicles currently depend on computers to run and both Television and radio would be knocked out which in itself and without computers the United States would go completely bonkers within hours.

 

The real problem is that with the United States presumably defending the nuclear sites from military attacks and from cyber-attacks as well as providing advanced radar systems from aboard naval vessels matched to anti-missile interceptors of various types including jamming and interception, and have aircraft capable of taking out any aircraft identified as foreign and entering Iranian air-space with unclear intent or bombs hanging under the wings defiantly stating its mission, all of which means that for the foreseeable future the United States has joined the other side even against the people of the United States who knowingly continue to reside in the Great Satan and have yet to mend their ways and become good Dhimmis living the life in burka-land. The real question is how Iran can be derailed from attaining nuclear weapons, and not just any nuclear weapons, but miniaturized, weaponized, multiple-warhead, thermonuclear devices and the stealth cruise missiles capable of three-thousand-five-hundred mile routing at under fifty meters altitude and what would be the consequences to the nation which so took one for the team, and not necessarily an appreciative team? Because of the United States provided protection, should this continue to be the United States policy by the next President elected in November 2016 and taking office in mid-January 2017 no matter what their reasoning, such would mean that Iran might have such capabilities before they become easily targeted. This situation would present the parts of the world under threat, oddly enough including the United States, in so desperate a position that they might see tempting a shootout with the United States over Iran as giving them better hopes of survival than waiting for another President as by then protecting Iran would have become cemented policy that only the most assured and confident of Presidents would go against meaning there would be no end in sight. Boy, that sure is a SKerry Deal President Obama has there.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

Explosion at Iran’s Parchin Nuclear Plant and What We Might Learn

There is a very good reason why the Iranians continue to refuse to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the Parchin Military Compound and the areas they suspect is the research facility for nuclear triggers, but that is just the half of it. Today the Iranian semi-official ISNA news agency reported there were two fatalities resulting from a fire which swept through an “explosive materials production unit” which produced a “loud explosion” which was audible several kilometers away. Further reports from opposition Sahamnews outlet claimed the explosion was so powerful it shattered windows some fifteen kilometers away from the site. Any way you slice through the conflicting information, the one thing which is unavoidable is that Iran had a very bad accident in the facilities where their research for a working nuclear trigger is presumed by numerous intelligence sources to be carried out. This should get any thinking person to wondering what the Iranians would want with a complicated, sophisticated high explosive trigger which might require sufficient high explosives stored on sight which might cause an explosion even remotely close to what was reported if they are not producing nuclear weapons from their completely peaceful civilian nuclear research program. But such thinking should raise further questions such as what type of weapon would produce the need for such amounts of explosives.

If it had not been established before, it should now be evident that the Iranians are working towards a nuclear weapons arsenal and not just electrical generation for future needs and medical research and treatments. What remains is to discern is the most likely type of nuclear weapon the Iranian scientists have been ordered to research and produce for their arsenal. If one were to look back in history to the Manhattan Project we would discover that there were two completely different types of nuclear devices dropped on Japan. The program climaxed with the dropping of the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” in that order. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima by parachute at 8:15 in the morning was called Little Boy, and it exploded 2,000 feet above the city with a yield equal to approximately 12-15,000 tons of TNT as calculated by the top scientists of the project. The Little Boy bomb was not even tested before being deployed as the physicists were so completely certain of the design that they figured that it did not need to have a demonstration for proof of validity of concept. Little Boy used the Uranium-235 in a gun-style bomb where a machined bullet, projectile or plug which sits at one end of the length of the device with high explosives behind it set to explode when the detonator activates. The projectile travels at high speed into the target which is a block or sphere also made from Uranium-235. The impact speed is set at a sufficient velocity to begin a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reactive explosion. The design of a bomb of the style and engineering is considered to be so primitive in this the twenty-first century that it can be readily downloaded or found in your local library, assuming there is still a public library in your town in this Internet age. Developing a bomb such as Little Boy would not require any amount of explosives sufficient to shatter windows fifteen kilometers away or be heard over an even greater distance.

So, could the Iranians be working on another design, say the same as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki which was named Fat Man which was an entirely different design which had required a test device before it was approved for use by the military forces in the Pacific to force an end to World War II. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a plutonium core. Fat Man was detonated at an altitude of approximately 1,800 feet over the city and had a yield of approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. In order to bring the plutonium-240 isotope to critical mass and initiate the chain reaction the surrounding high explosives needed to be designed carefully, crafted with care and near perfection and then detonated in an exacting sequence which places equal and seamlessly even pressure compacting the core until the bomb explodes with greater force than the entire bomb weight in high explosives could ever produce. This type of bomb requires a sufficient mass of high explosives in order to produce the device, but probably not a store of high, medium and slow explosives to have produced the explosions described occurring at the Parchin Military Base. The design for a Fat Man type device is also relatively easy to find though some of the finer points of the device are usually left out or are vaguely defined. There is a very good reason that the design for a Fat Man device are not given anywhere near as completely as the Little Boy device, though neither device’s complete design is given, is that there is another level of nuclear device which requires an implosions fission device similar but more advanced than Fat Man as the precursor in order to attain the force to attain the fusion of a hydrogen bomb, a thermo-nuclear device, a far more destructive device than any fission device by a factor anywhere from ten to a thousand times.

The making of either the gun style or the implosion type device could be developed, even given the sketchy designs available, by any physicist of any repute. Developing a thermo-nuclear device would be considerably more difficult. Such a device starts with an implosion device of sufficient yield that it can compress the entirety of the core device to force the fusion of hydrogen atoms in the core device. Even after developing a large and energetic enough to provide the compressive force, one still has to develop the inner core of the thermo-nuclear device which is never revealed with any accuracy or even imaginary measurements. This is likely wise and makes the development of such weapons of mass destruction that much more difficult which will hopefully handicap those much of the rest of the world prays never get possession of such devices. Iran has been working towards developing such a device for close to two decades. Developing a thermo-nuclear device would require more high explosives as the triggering mechanism would have to be far more sophisticated and thus more experimentation. Perhaps the suspicions of Netanyahu are more valid than the excuses from other locales where all the Israeli protestations are dismissed out of hand. Perhaps we should all simply soothe our suspicions and fears with the fact and hopes that the explosion set the Iranian nuclear weapons program back some relatively large amount. Still, we can also prove our humanity and regret the loss of life and give our sympathy to their families and pray that the Iranian nuclear research and programs never take an additional life, Iranian or anybody from anywhere on our ever shrinking planet.

Below are pictures depicting before and after the explosion:

 

Before/After Parching Military Base explosions

 

Beyond the Cusp