Iran and nukes? A detailed article can be found HERE. It is by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security. There is no cutting to the chase here because of the detail, but the construction of ten or twenty thousand P-2 centrifuges (best and most efficient) is very difficult. This is because there is a rotor involved that must be machined to very high tolerances, far too high for all but advanced industrial states to produce. However the P-1 has a copper rotor, is easy to make, but will not produce the quantities needed for a terror state like Iran. The really bad news in all this speculation is the so called "Khan Network" of tens of thousands of spare parts, diagrams, and instructions containing all you need to get into the atomic bomb business. Lybia was all set to go based on help from the Pakistani "scientists's" plans and parts.

The components for roughly 500 P1 centrifuges that went to Iran in the mid-90s were, according to reports, from centrifuges that Pakistan had retired from its main centrifuge program. Members of the network were able to remove them in secret and sell them to Iran. Initial exports of the P1 centrifuges to Iran in the mid-1990s included 500 machines retired from Pakistan's nuclear program or made under contract by the network, says the report. This quantity of P1 centrifuges would only be able to produce about one quarter of a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium in a year.

A scary detailing of the workshop network that can produce these P-1 parts is HERE. No matter, it seems to be impossible for Iran to be nuke ready before 2010 at the earliest. They are just blustering. Now. We think.