Nuclear Gamble

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — The showdown over Iran’s nuclear program is likely to accelerate in 2013 as sanctions tighten, Israel threatens military strikes, and the centrifuges keep spinning. While most attention will be focused on the two most oft-discussed sites of uranium enrichment — Natanz and Fordow — a third site on the gulf

A successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could cause mass civilian casualties and send toxic plumes of chemicals toward allied nations, a recent study found. “It is an ugly picture that needs to be considered, and whoever is thinking about attacking [an] Iranian facility, they need to take this into account,” said Khosrow Semnani, author

The West may not use nuclear weapons on Iran, but attacking its nuclear enrichment facilities will have a similar effect. As you can tell by the title, this 61-page paper, The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble, is not Tehran-friendly. The report, released in September, is the product of Khosrow B. Semnani, an Iranian-American industrialist and philanthropist with,

I’ve been meaning to write about this report on the multifold human costs of militarily striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and am happy to find that it’s already been noted by Golnaz Esfandiari as well as Gordon Lubold, among others. (Marsha Cohen’s well-read Lobe Log post on the same topic was the closest thing to such

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The threat that Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poses to Israel could prompt an attack from the Israelis. _______________________________________________________________________________________ One day after the 11th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan, let’s turn our attention to that nation’s neighbor to the west — Iran. Iran is kind of hard to ignore,

by Richard Silverstein on October 6, 2012 · 13 comments in Mideast Peace The University of Utah’s Hinckley School of Politics and Omid for Iran conducted an extensive year-long study of the impacts of a western military attack on Iran.  Led by Iranian-American environmental engineer Khosrow Semnani, a panel of nuclear engineers, scientists and senior

An Iranian security directs media at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, with the reactor building seen in the background, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010. (Associated Press) __________________________________________________________________________________ When protests broke out in Iran this week over the devaluation of the nation’s currency, Khosrow Semnani saw the possible start

No one in Iran is — and few in the West are — talking about the potential death toll, but it could rival the catastrophes of Bhopal and Chernobyl BEHROUZ MEHRI / AFP / Getty Images Iranian twin sisters sit in front of worshippers performing ‘Id al-Fitr prayers to mark the end of the holy

Lost in the debate on Iran is the human cost of a strike against the country’s nuclear sites, according to a new report published by an Iranian-American with a background in industrial nuclear waste and chemicals. Khosrow Semnani argues in “The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble,” that striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, where the IAEA has verified an