Monday, May 07, 2012

Baird suggests Canada and Iran are the same on nukes

John Baird won't say, but the title of this post isn't wrong.

"When they're enriching uranium to 20 per cent, when they've got the volume of materials. … When you're putting all the ingredients in front of you, it obviously wouldn't take long to make the decision to do it," he said.
"They're certainly moving to be able to be in that position, then they could certainly dash to the end which could be done in as few as nine or as many as 18 months."
Baird called the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran "unfathomable," and said it would inevitably lead to nuclear proliferation right across the region, which the minister said is a concern for the entire planet.
"The real concern is what would it do to security in the region," he said. "And frankly, Arab states are just as concerned as Israel is with a nuclear-armed Iran...you also look at the potential for proliferation — other countries wanting to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the threat of Iran."

Baird is lamenting that Iran may have what is called a threshold capacity for nuclear weapons. This means that country is technologically capable of producing a viable nuclear weapon within a few months of taking the decision to make one. Guess what? Canada also sits in that boat, and so does virtually every country in the world with technological means to make nuclear energy. This is not news. This nothing but fear mongering for the for all those domestic interests that would see Canada get stuck into another deadly mess of stupid for fear and loathing based rationales that defy reason and evidence.

What Baird will never say are things like this. Baird also won't talk about why Iran might want to develop a threshold capacity for nuclear weapons for regional strategic reasons. Indeed, I am half surprised some Conservative backbencher hasn't proposed a policy change arguing for Canadian nukes, you know, to meet the threat from Iran or something.

5 comments:

Dana said...

I always think of John Baird as the Chief Eunuch of the High Court of Harperia. I see his name as "Bayerd". In high fantasy novels there are always a series of murderous plots being hatched against Chief Eunuchs. High fantasy novels are not real life of course and there are no murderous plots being hatched against our Bayerd.

Unknown said...

I find it interesting that nobody questioned Baird on his "20%" number, when in fact an efficient nuclear weapon would need to be enriched at 90%. For historical interest, Little Boy that was dropped on Hiroshima was 85% HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium). Yes, a very crude bomb could be made with 20% LEU (Light Enriched Uranium) but nothing that would likely do much damage, hence the inefficiency argument. If the argument Baird is trying to make is that Iran could make a bomb easily and then fire it off to do a small count of damage, fair enough, but would Iran be so stupid as to send out a bomb that is inefficient and would do very limited damage?

I'd like to add that I was sad to read on CBC that Evan Solomon didn't press Baird on the position from the top Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz that Iran was lead by "rational" people who have no desire to enrich uranium to be used in a nuclear weapon. Why is that, I wonder?

Edstock said...

I'm not sure if a 20% bomb could be made to go super-critical. It certainly won't using the gun-type architecture (Little Boy) so that leaves only implosion (Fat Man) — and implosion's a stone cold bitch to get to work.
I also wonder why the Iranians aren't using Plutonium instead.

kootcoot said...

We all know who the nuclear armed to the teeth rogue nation in the Middle East is and it ain't Iran.......hint, its name does begin with the same letter though!

Steve said...

The Americans would never let Canada have nukes.