Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
I wouldn't be very confident that nuclear forensics would work with a "dirty" bomb, Remember,you don't need weapons grade Uranium to make one. Iran probably could make one right now with enough of the radioactive material cesium-137 to send most of population of Israel running for 50 years and it's doubtful it could be tracked to an Iranian reactor.
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Very true.
Also, if you consider the knowledge that this forensics exists, it means that the only way you can reasonably expect to make an attack like this and avoid a counterattack is to establish plausible deniable. It would be completely foolhardy to use nuclear material from your own reactors. Even using material from a foreign source, like old soviet warhead purchased on the black market for example, or having some nuclear material "fall off the truck" when it is being sunk to the bottom of the ocean, there are so many ways of tracing it back to your doorstep.
The only way to avoid a counter attack IMHO is to have the operation so distantly separated from your national affairs that it could never be connected. I think that would be borderline impossible given the efforts the US and other nations have certainly put into intel and policing in these areas..
edit: I just realized that I probably just summarized 2 Tom Clancy novels and the movie Peacemaker in this post.