The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship

[Jan Klimkowski]

Be scared.

Be very very scared.

"Independent thinktank" ISIS (Institute For Science And International Security) has spoken:

Iran has enough uranium for five nuclear weapons, claims US thinktank

Institute for Science and International Security says uranium output up by a third but needs more refining for use in bombs

Damien Pearse and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 May 2012 11.03 BST


Iran has significantly increased its output of low-enriched uranium and if it was further refined could make at at least five nuclear weapons, according to a US thinktank.

The Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks Iran's nuclear programme, made the analysis on the basis of data in the latest quarterly report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The UN watchdog's report, published on Friday, showed Iran pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of UN resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tonnes of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5% since it began the work in 2007 some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

This equates to nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and the thinktank said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.

"This total amount of 3.5% low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," its analysis said.

But the thinktank added that some of Iran's higher-grade uranium had been converted into reactor fuel and would not be available for nuclear weapons, at least not quickly.

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, which is Iran's stated purpose, or to provide material for bombs, if refined to a much higher degree. The west suspects that may be Iran's ultimate goal despite the Islamic Republic's denials.

Iran began enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20% in 2010, saying it needed this to fuel a medical research reactor. It later expanded the work sharply by launching enrichment at an underground site, Fordow.

It alarmed a suspicious west since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 90% or weapons-grade uranium.

The IAEA report said Iran had added another 350 enrichment centrifuges to the existing 700 at Fordow, which is buried deep under rock and soil to protect it against any enemy attacks.

Although not yet being fed with uranium, the new machines could be used to further boost Iran's output of uranium enriched to 20%.

The Institute for Science and International Security said Iran still appeared to be experiencing problems in its testing of production-scale units of more advanced centrifuges that would allow it to refine uranium faster, even though it had made some progress.

So, who or what is ISIS?

Via Sourcewatch, here's Scott Ritter, the UN Weapons Inspector who started blowing the whistle and promptly had his reputation trashed.

Note Ritter's complete scorn for the role of ISIS in the Iraq WMD fiasco:

David Albright is the chairperson of ISIS. He is involved in the Iraq Policy Information Project, the National Committee on North Korea and the Task Force on US Korea Policy.

Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, wrote an extensive critique of Albright's posturing for the media on nuclear issues. Ritter writes[1]:
I bring up this history because during the entire time of my intense, somewhat intimate cooperation with the IAEA Action Team, one name that never entered into the mix was David Albright. Albright is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS, an institute which he himself founded), and has for some time now dominated the news as the "go-to" guy for the U.S. mainstream media when they need "expert opinion" on news pertaining to nuclear issues. Most recently, Albright could be seen commenting on a report he authored, released by ISIS on June 16, in which he discusses the alleged existence of a computer owned by Swiss-based businessmen who were involved in the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market ring. According to Albright, this computer contained sensitive design drawings of a small, sophisticated nuclear warhead which, he speculates, could fit on a missile delivery system such as that possessed by Iran. I have no objection to an academically based think tank capable of producing sound analysis about the myriad nuclear-based threats the world faces today. But David Albright has a track record of making half-baked analyses derived from questionable sources seem mainstream. He breathes false legitimacy into these factually challenged stories by cloaking himself in a résumé which is disingenuous in the extreme. Eventually, one must begin to question the motives of Albright and ISIS. No self-respecting think tank would allow itself to be used in such an egregious manner. The fact that ISIS is a creation of Albright himself, and as such operates as a mirror image of its founder and president, only underscores the concerns raised when an individual lacking in any demonstrable foundation of expertise has installed himself into the mainstream media in a manner that corrupts the public discourse and debate by propagating factually incorrect, illogical and misleading information. In his résumé Albright prominently advertises himself as a "former U.N. weapons inspector." Indeed, this is the first thing that is mentioned when he describes himself to the public. Witness an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post which he jointly authored with Jacqueline Shire in January 2008, wherein he is described as such: "David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security." His erstwhile U.N. credentials appear before his actual job title. Now, this is not uncommon. I do the same thing when describing myself, noting that I was a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. I feel comfortable doing this, because it's true and because my résumé is relevant to my writing. In his official ISIS biography, Albright details his "U.N. inspector" experience as such: "Albright cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997, focusing on analyses of Iraqi documents and past procurement activities. In June 1996, he was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. On this inspection mission, Albright questioned members of Iraq's former uranium enrichment programs about their statements in Iraq's draft Full, Final, and Complete Declaration." Now, as I have explained previously, I cooperated actively between 1992 and 1998 with the IAEA Action team, covering the same ground that David Albright claims to have. I do not doubt his assertion that he was in contact with the IAEA during the period claimed; I just doubt the use of the word actively to describe this cooperation. Maybe Albright was part of a top-secret "shadow" inspection activity that I was unaware of. I strongly doubt this. In 1992, when Albright states he began his "active cooperation" with the IAEA, he was serving as a "Senior Staff Scientist" with the Federation of American Scientists. That same year Albright, in collaboration with Frans Berkhout of Sussex University and William Walker of the University of St. Andrews, published "World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium," 1992 (SIPRI and Oxford University Press). From March 1991 until July 1992, Albright, together with Mark Hibbs, wrote a series of seven articles on the Iraqi nuclear weapons programs for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The final three articles of this series, entitled "Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts," "Iraq: It's all over at Al Atheer" and "Iraq's shop-till-you-drop nuclear program," were in part based upon information provided to Albright and Hibbs by the IAEA in response to questions posed by the two authors. So far as I can tell, this is the true nature of David Albright's "active cooperation." Far from being a subject-matter expert brought in by the IAEA to review Iraqi documents, Albright was simply an outsider with questions.
...
I was in Iraq at the time, spearheading the very controversial UNSCOM 150 inspection, which found our team barred from entering several sensitive sites in and around Baghdad. On the few occasions when I was able to spend some down time at the U.N. headquarters on Canal Street, I would catch up with the status of the other inspections taking place in Iraq at the same time, including the one Albright was attached to. From all accounts, his lone stint as an inspector was at best unremarkable. He was a dilettante in every sense of the word, a Walter Mitty-like character in a world of genuine U.N. inspectors. There was recognition among most involved that bringing an outsider such as David Albright into the inspection process was a mistake. Not only did he lack any experience in the nuclear weapons field (being an outsider with only secondhand insight into limited aspects of the Iraqi program), he had no credibility with the Iraqi nuclear scientists, and his questions, void of any connectivity with the considerable record of interaction between the IAEA and Iraq, were not taken seriously by either side. Albright left Iraq in June 1996, and was never again invited back. This is the reality of the relationship between Albright and the IAEA, and the singular event in his life which he uses as the justification for prominently promoting himself as a "former U.N. inspector." While not outright fraud, Albright's self-promoted relationship with the IAEA, and his status as a "former U.N. inspector," is at best disingenuous, all the more so since he exploits this misleading biographical data in his ongoing effort to insert himself into the public eye as a nuclear weapons expert, a title not supported by anything in his life experience