The Ayatollah can’t go complaining that Netanyahu targeted a nuclear research facility because he can’t admit that’s what it was. Last month, Israel hit some crucial Iranian targets. One of them was Parchin. There was nothing radioactive about it but the very special plastic explosives they made there have only one purpose.
nuclear weapons parts
It takes a whole lot more than a pile of enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. While radioactive materials including uranium and plutonium are totally necessary to generate an atomic chain reaction, turning it into a bomb isn’t easy.
You need a way to make it explode when you want it to and not when you don’t.
Israel has “significantly damaged Iran’s effort over the past year to resume nuclear weapons research.” Despite the crippling assaults, the radical Arabs keep inching closer to a bomb. That’s where the facility at Parchin comes in.
Late in October, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the lab. That’s been confirmed by “three U.S. officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.” Iran claimed previously that the site was inactive. It is now.
“One former Israeli official briefed on the strike said it destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it.”
It’s not enough to bring the two halves of the uranium sphere core into contact. The timing and alignment conditions must be exactly perfect or it won’t work. It requires explosive “lensing.” That’s done with layers of specially shaped and arranged plastic explosives.
Iran denies everything
Iran “has denied it is pursuing nuclear weapons.” Everyone knows they are lying. As of Sunday, November 17, nobody is sure if the Ayatollah is still breathing. Reports say he’s dead or terminally ill and his replacement has already been named.
Iran denied that rumor with a photo and report of a meeting. It was a still photo, not a video, and could have been taken anytime.
According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, “Iran is not after nuclear weapons, period.” That could mean they already have them. “The Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment for this story.” They’re in trouble with Tehran for allowing news of a meeting with Elon Musk to leak out the other day.
Trump has already named “several key national security and foreign policy officials who are hawkish on Iran, which could lead to increased U.S. pressure on the Islamic Republic.” Trump likes to go around humming “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran…” Because he’s old enough to remember when that ditty went viral back in the 80’s.
The big target of the October 25 Israeli airstrike was the Taleghan 2 facility. That’s the one which “was part of the Iranian Amad nuclear weapons program.” Iran allegedly mothballed it in 2003. “It was used for testing explosives needed to set off a nuclear device, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.”
The Iranians tried to palm it off as civilian research. “They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t,” a U.S. official relates.
