The United States and Iran had their first meeting in seven years, and the Iranian nuclear program is undoubtedly the most critical topic.
If the talks fail, depending on the results of any possible military attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, would Iran make a mad dash for a nuclear bomb? Specifically, would Iran break out of the legal constraints on uranium enrichment and pursue the highly enriched uranium-235 fuel necessary to sustain a chain reaction and produce a big explosion?
There is another crucial question to answer as well: to have a reliable device small enough to fit atop a missile that could survive atmospheric reentry before detonation, would Iran need to test nuclear weapons? And if so, how many times and under what conditions?
Iran has reliable, test-proven ballistic missiles. The international community also discovered the basic parameters of the bomb design Iran was pursuing just over two decades ago. However, what is unknown to the global community, and likely to Tehran, is whether any such warheads would work as Iranian scientists aspire.
There have been some 2,000 nuclear detonations since 1945. However, virtually none of those explosions involved an actual nuclear-armed ballistic missile; the United States did it only once, in a test over part of the Pacific Ocean in 1962.
Considering that countries can test missiles and nuclear devices separately and assuming they can miniaturize the latter to the point where a rocket could carry them, the question remains whether warheads can be sturdy enough to detonate after the rough-and-tumble of volatile air conditions.
Iran may not need to carry out any nuclear tests to have the ability to detonate once they can build a bomb. Still, it may need to carry out a few successful tests to have confidence in a smaller, more efficient nuclear warhead of the type it might hope to use to threaten Israel in particular.
