fogw,

The Iraqis at the time were pursuing a different track to nuclear weapons than the Iranians are today. The Osirak reactor could easily be used to produce plutonium. The Iranians, on the other hand, are pursuing uranium enrichment, which does not require a reactor at all. The infrastructure is therefore completely different.

LakeRuins,
There aren’t any power transmission lines from Iranian nuclear facilities because they don’t produce power. Only power reactors connected to a power generation station will generate electricity. Iran’s Bushehr reactor is just such a reactor, but it isn’t yet complete. The adjacent turbine house which will, once the reactor is finished, generate power IS complete. All that remains is to finish the reactor, fuel it, get it running and hook the whole thing up to the national grid. Most of the other nuclear facilities in Iran are for research or are part of the fuel enrichment process needed to generate fuel or HEU for weapons. The remainder support the Arak heavy water research reactor being built south of Tehran. Once this reactor is up and running (in about 3-4 years barring any problems) Iran will be able to produce plutonium – provided they are able to get around IAEA safeguards.

The problem with attacking Iran is that you can’t make them unlearn the technology, even if we’re able to destroy all their existing infrastructure which is questionable at best. I personally believe that a comprehensive strike would set their program back more like 5-7 years, but this kind of prediction is hard to make without intimate knowledge of the Iranian program and its facilities.

One alternative is to kill the nuclear scientists themselves. In August 1943 we bombed the residences of the scientists and engineers working on the German V2 rocket program. Several key scientists were killed and the program was delayed. Intelligence is a key issue here – it would be hard to identify and track the hundreds of scientists involved in the nuclear program.

NPP on September 18, 2006 at 2:57 PM