The Iran Deal.... What the average political hack misses.

This is a picture I dare not blow up any further (pun intended) - it is of "Fat Man", the plutonium based bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.  And it is a little knowledge of the Manhattan Project and Nobel Prize winning scientist Glenn Seaborg that is needed to understand what is "in between the lines" of the deal recently cut with Iran.

According to nonuclear.se, Plutonium is a man-made nuclear explosive; it is created inside all nuclear reactors when uranium is bombarded with neutrons. Some uranium atoms can absorb a neutron without fissioning; when that happens, they are transmuted into plutonium atoms. Plutonium has become the nuclear explosive of choice in the world’s nuclear arsenals. Therefore, the goal of this deal had to be to stop Iran from developing a Plutonium based nuclear arsenal - Iran still could tell its hard-liners that they can produce a bomb.  The P5+1 (The permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) gets to be able to tell its hard-liners that Iran will not be able to produce Plutonium based bombs, explaining why this is so important in private.

No deal is perfect.  But this deal allows both sides to save face.  If anyone is worried about what will happen to Israel, they shouldn't be - the history of the US and the USSR shows how Mutual Assured Destruction helped prevent World War 3. (Or, I should say, that this war was fought via proxies and with money - a much safer form of warfare for all sides.) The Iranians may be crazy, but they are not insane.  The last thing they want to do is provoke the Israelis into exploding 1 of their estimated 100-200 warheads over Tehran.

If one looks at the size of a ball that represents the amount of fissile Plutonium needed for a bomb, it's easy to see that one could easily transport that much material anywhere on the globe.  Years ago, my high school had some non weapons grade "Yellowcake" (Uranium) - and I expect that 64 Kilos of the stuff would be much larger than the ball above.  In short, Iran has signed off on a deal which prevents its fissile material from being used by non-state operatives.  (That means: No Uranium or Plutonium in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah.)

I'm not sure if Iran will live up to the letter of this deal.  But I expect that there will be many people interested in keeping everyone honest - and I'd bet that the Iranians are serious, if only because they prefer not to ignite an arms race between it, the Saudis and Egypt....