I haven't followed this story for the last few days, but it strikes me as an extremely disingenuous argument. No one's saying the synthesization process itself requires a Nobel laureate, but obtaining the chemicals and the equipment needed, never mind the protocol since Iranian chemists only succeeded in synthesizing Novichoks last year (and only on micro scale) at which point it was added to the OCAD for detection purposes, is a wholly different thing. Show me where anyone would be able to buy compounds to make schedule 1-classed O-alkyls and how they'd be able to keep and handle them outside very specific environments. Things like methylphosphonyl difluoride have no industrial use whatsoever. It's highly unstable and so fucking corrosive that it eats through glass.
This is like when you had Seymour Hersh claiming on CNN that sarin gas can be cooked up in your kitchen. It can't, and any such laughable claim, if made in good faith, should either be elaborated on and backed up with proof and examples, or it should be dismissed.
Edit: And to be absolutely clear here, I'm not saying the Novichok did come from Russia. Could another country make Novichok in order to frame them? Conceivably, since the Iranians managed it, albeit very recently and only on a small scale. The compound is documented. But it's a bit like, when you're being bombed by a plane of known foreign design, make the argument that anyone with expert knowledge of how bombplanes are made, could manufacture his own and then use it to frame a political enemy. Plus it completely ignores Russia's response, which is just insane.
