Opinion

Iran’s building a nuke arsenal

Iran doesn’t want an atomic bomb — it wants 20 to 30 bombs a year and “hundreds of bombs within a decade,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister for Intelligence and Strategic Affairs warned Tuesday.

In a Jerusalem briefing for diplomats and reporters, the senior Cabinet minister, who closely observes Iran’s nuclear program, explained, “The Iranian program is designed to produce hundreds of nuclear bombs in a decade.” One giveaway: the uranium fuel-making capacity of Iran’s centrifuges and nuclear reactors.

Iran is only a few months from being able to “break out” enough nuclear fuel to form a few nuclear bombs, Steinitz noted in what is probably the most detailed and menacing account on Iran so far publicly offered by an Israeli official.

The briefing seemed the clearest signal yet that Israel — while expecting a firm threat of force by the United States and its allies against Iran’s atomic bomb program — is close to its own decision on how to block Iran if the West doesn’t act.

Iran already poses a nuclear threat many levels higher than North Korea, Steinitz said, because Iran is a wealthy country with a global agenda of imposing Islamic hegemony.

“Iran is totally different from North Korea,” he said. “North Korea has local ambitions, but Iran’s ambitions are global” — namely a push for hegemony for its brand of Islam.

And, where North Korea has trouble feeding its population, Iran is a wealthy oil producer that’s only starting to feel the sting of Western economic sanctions.

“The world has been quite sleepy about this,” Steinitz declared. “Many people underestimate the Iranian nuclear threat. They think Iran only wants a nuclear bomb, but Iran wants a nuclear arsenal. If they get a bomb, they will get many bombs.”

Steinitz pointed to the thousands of Iranian centrifuges at Natanz, another nuclear reactor at Qom and a third heavy-water facility — each contributing to the production of fuel for atomic weapons.

“North Korea can produce two to three bombs per year, but Iran will be able to produce 20 to 30 such weapons,” he said.

And Iran has already developed long-range missiles that could carry the bombs to distant targets. The Shehab rocket (a solid-fuel vehicle) has a proven range of 1,250 miles.

“Our only chance [to deter Iran] is to convince them they are paying something for nothing — that they are paying for a bomb that they will not be able to use,” said Steinitz, a philosophy professor who became a strategic affairs specialist.

“The Iranian program is designed to produce hundreds of nuclear weapons in a decade,” added Steinitz, detailing the hard-to-hide massive industrial capacity devoted to the Iranian bomb project.

But, Steinitz warned, once Iran achieves the critical amount of fuel, it could then hide the “weaponization” phase in small secret locations and build a number of bombs within a few weeks.

Time is running out on the option of convincing Iran to stop its own program, the Cabinet minister warned — and that can only succeed if backed by “a credible military threat.”

Until now, there has been no such threat.

Michael Widlanski is the author of “Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat.” He was strategic affairs adviser in Israel’s Ministry of Public Security.