Explosive material plus radioactive material equals dirty bomb. |
I think the US will have to get the parties together and say ok , here's the deal. Here's the sticks and here are the carrots. Now, we are prepared to do a deal. So far the US hasn't brought forth this carrot that I am sure Iran is very concerned about...namely assurance that we won't attack them to change their regime by force...something that they are very concerned about so I think the pieces are almost in pace but not quite yet. |
I would say we are going through the Kabuki that one would anticipate and it will go one over the next several months which the objective is to get Iran to freeze its nuclear research and any future nuclear enrichment and to find some package of carrots and sticks that will be sufficient to lead them to accept that as the best outcome. I think that is unlikely to succeed but it is the best strategy to be following. |
My bottom line is that if the U.S. government just stands on the autopilot, just on the current trim line ... I think that it is more likely than not that we will see a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities in less than a decade. |
Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, |
Since earlier this year, the administration has shifted from an ideological approach toward North Korea, which produced nothing but counterproductive results, to a realistic, pragmatic approach with interesting results. |
That means no new national production of highly enriched uranium from which a bomb could be made, and that's the issue over Iran. |
The danger is that a terrorist like Osama bin Laden who is very motivated ... gets a bomb out of a place like Russia. [Say] some crook steals it, he sells it to Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden brings it to Cleveland, or Boston, or L.A., and blows it up. |
The North Koreans have every intention to lie, steal and cheat as much as they can get away with and as they have been doing for decades. But they would also say we've been cheating them through the whole process or acting in bad faith. |
There is going to be lots of twists and turns here, and I think both the U.S. and Iraq will end up making some compromises, accommodations, as we get towards endgame. |
They could bring the weapon today inside a cargo container that comes to one of our ports, and the technologies that we have deployed would have a low chance of finding it. |
We are seeing the most intense bargaining among big states that we have seen since the end of the Cold War, with war in the offing and no certainty about the outcome, |
You don't find people of integrity who operate in that zone. |