At the height of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program, which nearly succeeded in building a bomb in 1991, Tuwaitha incorporated research reactors, uranium mining and enrichment facilities, chemical engineering plants and an explosives fabrication center to build the device that detonates a nuclear core.
A nuclear weapon is not just a football that you can use at will.
Atomic weapons with what we know today can be cheap… The cost will not break the bank of anyone who wants them….
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb
It used to be you needed to have a very large sophisticated state before you could even have a nuclear weapon... Now the technology is widespread enough. It doesn't take very many people to be able to cobble together a devastating attack, and all it takes is one.
It is most regrettable that nuclear energy is being harnessed for making nuclear weapons.
This diffusion of nuclear weapons is terrible…terrible. Imagine a world with a large number of states with nuclear bombs.
The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had paused its nuclear weaponization work also reported with high confidence that such work had been going on through 2003. How far did they get? That's an important question, but I fear that the Iranians will never answer it, and we will not insist that they do.
I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program.
North Korea continues to advance its nuclear technology and will soon reach weaponization. Regarding its intercontinental ballistic missiles, it is continuously making progress. So currently, it is urgent for us to freeze North Korea's program so they will stop additional provocations and stop advancement of its technologies. I believe during my upcoming summit meeting in the U.S. I will be able to discuss a two-phased approach to the North Korean nuclear issue - the first being a freeze and the second being complete dismantlement.