No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Drudge)

The Jerusalem Post reports some rather disturbing items regarding the Mad Mullahs’ “peaceful” nuclear program:

• In recent days, diplomats have been worried that Iran has been testing neutron initiators. As the Post puts it, “A neutron initiator begins the implosion that ends with a nuclear blast, and as a component of the nuclear cycle has no use in civilian or military programs unless in the production of atomic bombs.”
• On Monday, The Times (of London) reported that an Asian intelligence agency found said neutron initiator work had been going on between 2003 and 2007, during which Iran claimed that its program was “peaceful”.
• Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said that for the first time, the agency would test a scenario based on an Iranian ICBM launch on the continental US.

Two quick reactions:

• I agree with Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who said, “If Iran is working on weapons, it means there is no diplomatic solution…. Is this the smoking gun? That’s the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium.”
• One of the reasons the original Eastern European missile defense plans were the way they were was to intercept Iranian ICBMs inbound to CONUS. I’m sure John McKittrick could correct me if my impressions of the various BMD programs are wrong, but an SM-3-based system will not deal with that particular threat no matter where in or around Eastern Europe it is based.

The ball’s been dropped for too long, and I have absolutely no confidence that Obama will pull the trigger on any action against Iran.

Revisions/extensions (6:05 pm 12/15/2009) – John McKittrick pretty much confirmed my suspicions in a longer piece devoted to the BMD test, and noted the (ex-Army) THAAD also doesn’t handle ICBMs mid-flight.

He also gave the key difference between the January test and the previous ICBM BMD tests – unlike the side-on approach with the target launched from Alaska down the West Coast (to simulate a North Korean launch on CONUS), the target’s coming pretty much straight at Vandenberg from the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll. That’s a few extra thousand miles per hour in closing velocity.