The US objects to Iran's enrichment of uranium. This is a very difficult and energy consuming process. Natural uranium cannot be used for reactors or bombs. If the percentage of U-235 in uranium is increased ('enriched') from to three to five per cent it can be used in power reactors. The uranium must be enriched to 90 per cent U-235 to be 'weapons grade'.

Iran has started enriching uranium through a centrifuge process under IAEA monitoring. Any enrichment over five per cent is obviously not for power reactors. The IAEA has not reported any Iranian enrichment over five per cent. They detected minute amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) on unassembled centrifuge parts and documents that Iran received from Pakistan. They accept that the materials were contaminated in Pakistan.

So long as the IAEA stays on the job, Iran would not be able to use their known sites (those that Israel might bomb) to produce bomb fuel.

If the IAEA were kicked out of Iran, it would take a lot of effort and time for the low-enriched uranium to be enriched from four per cent U-235 to 90 per cent. Iran has no experience with such high enrichment and could not be sure that it could do so. The delay before bomb-grade fuel could be produced would give the international community plenty of time to react.

The CIA reported last December that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen.

If Israel or the US bombed Iran, the US fleets (and any Israeli submarines) in the Persian Gulf would be targets of Iranian counterattack, as would US military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran would fire conventional missiles at Israel. Iranian oil would go off the market and the shipment of oil through the Persian Gulf would be shut down. Oil would rise to $300 a barrel or more. The result would be disastrous.

If Iran had a secret program for producing highly enriched uranium, it would not be affected because its location would not be known. If Iran had a secret program and Israel knew about it, Israel could be eliminate it by informing the IAEA, which would then monitor it. If Iran had no secret program, then it was no threat before the attack.

Your reader called for Israel (a nuclear power) to wage an aggressive war against a country hundreds of miles away, accepting that the result would be '[w]orld recession, higher oil prices, increased political instability, [and] further terrorist outrages'. All this because the reader considers that at some time in the future, there would be the danger of another holocaust against the Jews, which Israel deters since its response would kill ten times as many people as the Nazi Holocaust.

Yours,
Doug Foxvog

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