Iran now at 3000 centrifuges

This was their goal when they announced that had successfully enriched uranium last year, and now they're at the level they promised then -- 3000 active centrifuges for enriching uranium:

Iran has reached a milestone in its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday, suggesting that the country now has 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges fully operating.

"We have now reached 3,000 machines," Ahmadinejad told thousands of Iranians gathered in Birjand, in eastern Iran, in a show of defiance of international demands to halt the program that the U.S. and its allies say masks the country's nuclear arms efforts.

Ahmadinejad has in the past claimed that Iran had succeeded in installing the 3,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

But Wednesday's claim appeared to go further, with Ahmadinejad's words and the tone and setting of his Wednesday speech suggesting he meant all 3,000 were running.

There is an expert quoted in the piece -- anonymous one, naturally -- that claims that not all of them are up and running. I'd be interested to know what the Israelis say, as we do know that they would have the inside knowledge; a point that has been repeated by Yoni Tidi in more than one interview with Hugh Hewitt.

But what makes this announcement even more foreboding is that experts have said repeatedly that Iran was years away from creating a nuclear weapon. With 3000 centrifuges online, a possible connection to North Korean nuclear scientists via Syria, and the continued work on their missile program, we can now cut years down to months. In April of last year, the Iranians boasted that they were working towards 54,000 active centrifuges, which would give them the ability to construct a new nuclear weapon in about two weeks, or two a month. With the 3000 online, if they had the technology now (and no one is certain if they do or not, especially given the recent Syrian admission of having a nuclear site that was bombed, and that they may or may not be sharing such technology with Iran) it would take them approximately 270 days or so to create one bomb.

So, yes, we are now down to months, and the clock is still ticking. The problem is that when this clock strikes midnight, we'd better hope and pray that we have the will necessary to prevent Iran from ever creating one. If not, expect to see new chaos coming out of the Middle East in the form of nuclear blackmail, and possibly even a nuclear holocaust.

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