Do any of us have real hard evidence? No, only speculation.

He does make a point though. China has a reliable business partner in the US.
China makes all kinds of things we use, from computer chips, tools, toys, and they're getting even larger than than now. Soon they will be rolling out new cards with a pricetag set at the same as ~$8,000-10,000 USD. They need us and, in a weird way, we need them.

Expect gas prices to just keep on rising, too. China is booming, and 10 years from now, lots of people are going to have cars. So they'll be tapping into the oil market as well.

Here's the thing. China is growing at an alarming rate. Sooner or later, at the rate our the American Economic decline, and China's growth, they won't be as dependent on us as we are on them. Saying that China will never attack the US because they need us is beying ridiculous.

Kind of like how Germany outstripped Britain's industrial capacity but could not get past the Royal Navy camping out in the English Channel.


Good luck with the Pacific.

Before we act rashly towards Iran, we should perhaps consider our other adventures in the Middle East and South Asia. Surely Afghanistan is now a moderate haven of democracy where religion is respected and tolerated. The same would most likely happen in Iran.

Oops.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4823874.stm

The Taliban and the Revolutionary Guard would be proud. Democracy, the tool that lets the masses oppress the minorities.

Who knows. I don't think I'm smart enough to answer that question really. Compromise could be anything from the Russian deal to handle the enrichment of uranium, to having Israel get rid of it's suspected nuclear arsenal and declaring the Middle East a nuclear free zone.

Technically I don't think there's any international law against the development of peaceful nuclear technology/energy. But which country has done that without building itself a few nukes? None that I know of.

America nor Israel can afford, nor will risk a "MAD"-like situation with Iran.

Canada comes to mind at first, I'm not positive but I think Japan as well. There may be others as well, (Germany?).

Slightly different situation. I don't think any of those countries have a nuclear reactor that's capable of pumping out weapons-grade plutonium.

Nuclear physics is not my area of expertise. I think there's a difference between the two kinds of reactors and processes applied. Something to do with how the uranium is enriched and processed by the reactor. Plus those countries allow IAEA oversight of their operations. Iran hasn't been forthcoming.

They don't use a reactor to gather weapons grade uranium. Most reactors use less than 20% U235 where as the rest of the Uranium is U238. Weapons grade Uranium is usually greater than 90% U235 even though much lower percents can be used to make a bomb. There are several process' used to separate the two different isotopes of Uranium, however none of them require a nuclear reactor. Most methods rely on the slight differences in physical properties of the two isotopes. Did I mention that it is extremely expensive to enrich Uranium? I believe U238 is what we use in our DU ammunition.

List of countries with nuclear weapons.

Uranium isn't such an attractive fuel for a nuclear bomb anyway. True, it allows for the construction of simple gun-triggered devices, something plutonium doesn't allow (technically speaking, it's not so much the plutonium as other impurities which are a by-product of the process used for plutonium production, but let's not go into details) and is perhaps slightly easier to handle, but otherwise it offers little advantage over plutonium. Plutonium, on the other hand, happens to be one of the major by-product of the nuclear reactions that happen in nuclear reactors and is created from U-238 which is plentiful. Thus it's easier to generate large quantities of plutonium than highly enriched uranium. Even "better", reprocessing is a legitimate activity in the peaceful nuclear fuel cycle, allowing to extract plutonium from spent fuel and later use it again in reactors.

With that said, there are plenty of countries which could easily enough get the bomb if they so much as wanted to. Canada, Japan and Germany are the most obvious examples, simply because they happen to have a mature nuclear industry, producing their own reactors designs and equipment, the necessary knowledge, often a complete nuclear fuel cycle and a strong industrial base in general. On top of that, they're trusted by most countries, and missing plutonium would likely not be that much of an international concern. Who'd believe someone saying "The Canadians are getting the bomb!"?

Other countries with a lesser technological and industrial base could get the bomb as well, but with a bit more difficulty. It essentially comes down to whether or not they already have at least one nuclear reactor, and whether they already have, or could reasonably easily build a reprocessing plant. With that taken care of, sure, you still have the theoretical side of things to take care of, but first of all, you're not looking at a H-bomb, making things much simpler, and the knowledge needed isn't exactly "cutting-edge" these days. And your average desktop computer likely has more computing power than was available at Los Alamos back in the forties.

The reason Iran is using uranium, or, well, is suspected to be using it for bombs, is simply that they happen to have a uranium enrichment plant and reconfiguring it for highly-enriched uranium production is easier than building a reprocessing plant. Other nations would likely follow North Korea's path and go with reprocessing.

The first computer, ENIAC, was capable of processing I believe three thousand calculations per second. Today's processors make billions each second.

Understatement of the year.

I know that. Though as far as I know the ENIAC wasn't used for anything related to A-bomb development, anyway. However I do know they used various mechanical calculating machines made by IBM at Los Alamos. Not that those are exactly powerful either.

Okay, I stand corrected by some very knowledgeable people.

:D

So very true.