Descriptions of "two-point implosion" warheads designs have occasionally appeared in the public domain (there are extensive descriptions on Wikipedia) and they were first developed by US scientists in the 1950s, but it remains an offence for American officials or even non-governmental nuclear experts with security clearance to discuss them.

More seriously, this sounds quite odd. They shouldn't need a warhead design this exotic - this is for very small size warheads indeed. It doesn't make sense that they would be seriously interested in this right off the bat. We're talking about a design choice that's commonly conceptualized as one that one is forced into by overriding and quite inflexible size constraints (e.g., being manportable; fitting into the diameter of a given artillery tube; etc.). The size constraints needed to produce a deliverable warhead with their rocket designs just aren't this demanding.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

that Iran's interested in developing man-portable nukes to hand over to terrorists.

Heh. "Here, have some of our most sensitive and costly technology. We're quite comfortable with it passing out of our direct control because we trust you'll use it for the agreed-upon purposes".

...that particular application. Early SADMs were an assemble in place gun type design. I don't have any difficulty believing that the Iranians could carry off that design challenge quite neatly and it also has the advantage of being efficient in its use of fissile material.

I lean a lot more to the "sexy tidbit leaks and a whole story gets woven around it". If one wanted to deliberately put pressure on the Iranians I rather expect there's a lot better material in the "dossier" that would hold together better. This is just red meat for the chattering classes.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

The dossier, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program",

seems more like lets fling some more sh*t to the press and see what sticks

...in the piece is the assertion that they worked on a two point design. Everything else has been well established for a goodly while. Dunno whether that means someone was talking out of school who shouldn't have, some told someone who then talked out of school, whether it's a planned leak, what. Just too small a datapoint to make any prognostications on how it came out.

Me, until I see exactly what the nature of the alleged work is, I'm gonna be pretty agnostic. I'd fall down dead if the Iranians weren't interested in the tech, but I have a real hard time thinking they'd go to this technical challenge in a serious way at this point in their development cycle. This is hard, it's not an efficient user of materiel [and that's their key challenge for the forseeable future (i.e., like 10 or 15 years)], it's not actually necessary to achieve their aims. Sounds a lot like a boffin on the inside of their development team being a little too interested in the kewl rather than the practical.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

including Israel use this design without nefarious purposes other than blowing the hell out of millions of people.

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform