Middle East Watch

According to several news sources Hizbollah has placed 20,000 troops at the northern boarder of Israel.

Hizbollah has been armed by Iran and Syria with longer range missiles such as the Fadjr-3 and the Fadjr-5. The Fadjr-5 has a 75 km range. However, Lebanon is threatening that it has the firepower to strike Tel Aviv which is twice the Fajr-5 range.

In response, Israel is moving tanks and personnel into North Israel to meet the threat.

Our favorite mustached Middle East diplomat, John Bolton, says that Israel must strike Iran before Aug 21, 2010 when Russia will load the Iran nuclear reactor at Bushehr and turn it on.

However, we need to remember that the Bushehr reactor is a light-water reactor that can only produce reactor-grade plutonium and not weapons-grade plutonium. You need heavy-water (D2O) to do that or just stick with the tedious process of concentrating Uranium to weapons grade. What happens if you irradiate Uranium 238 in light water is you get a mix of interfering Plutonium isotopes and not the pure Plutonium 239.

However we know Iran is not making weapons grade Uranium because they have agreed to give half their Uranium stock to Turkey and Brazil for enrichment in exchange for reactor-grade fuel for their light-water reactors.