America's Nuclear Nightmares: Russia, China, and Soon Iran?

America's Nuclear Nightmares: Russia, China, and Soon Iran?

05/29/14

Gabriel Scheinmann

Nonproliferation, Iran

"American allies fear the Obama Administration will similarly let Iran go nuclear due to a lack of certainty. Not once has the American intelligence community accurately predicted when hostile states have gone nuclear..."

Fifty years ago, the CIA produced a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) on China’s nuclear weapons program for President Lyndon Johnson. Overhead photography taken three weeks earlier revealed that a Chinese installation in Lop Nor was definitively a nuclear test site and would come online in two months. However, the CIA estimated, China would not have the necessary amount of fissionable material, which the United States assumed would come from a small plutonium reactor at Baotou, until mid-1965.

Seeking to make sense of the conflicting timelines, the CIA began to speculate: perhaps the Soviets had transferred additional fissionable material, perhaps the CIA was unaware of other enrichment sites, or, perhaps, as is often the case in large undertakings, progress among the different elements of China’s nuclear program had merely become uneven. In conclusion, the SNIE reads, the available facts “do not permit a very confident estimate of the chances of a Chinese Communist nuclear detonation in the next few months. Clearly the possibility of such a detonation before the end of the year cannot be ruled out—the test may occur during this period. On balance, however, we believe that it will not occur until sometime after the end of 1964.” Seven weeks later, China tested its first nuclear bomb on October 16, 1964, a highly enriched uranium implosion device.

Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-nuclear-nightmares-russia-china-soon-iran-10557