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Weighing the Iranian Nuclear Threat

[Newsweek] Michael Hirsh - David Albright, a physicist and former UN nuclear inspector, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington. "Iran has installed about a thousand centrifuges underground, distributed in six or seven 'cascades,' and Ahmadinejad is declaring today that this is 'industrial-scale' enrichment. A year ago, they were saying the goal was 3,000 centrifuges, so he has changed the benchmark somewhat," said Albright. "They're still a couple of years away, in a worst-case scenario, from being able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons...but this has exceeded the expectations put forward in the [U.S.] National Intelligence Estimate that Iran couldn't have a nuclear weapon until 2010 to 2015." "They're probably going to need to install 3,000 centrifuges to have the capability to produce nuclear weapons....They'll probably need another year to do that. That will be enough to make enough highly enriched uranium to make one bomb, or perhaps two bombs, a year."
2007-04-11 01:00:00
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