I am generally critical of Obama administration efforts to blame George Bush for everything that happens in and with the United States. But I've been thinking that Bush is partly to blame for the Iran nuclear agreement and he will be partly to blame when (and if, but more likely when) Iran gets nuclear weapons. No, Bush is not to blame as much as Obama, but he shares in the blame for this one.
Bush is to blame because he should have had the junk to destroy Iran's nuclear capability while he was still in office and before Obama came to power. Instead, he cowered in front of a ridiculous National Intelligence Estimate that claimed that Iran was no longer pursuing nuclear weapons, and that Bush himself knew to be false.
Bush did not have the junk to buck this anonymous 'estimate' and for that he will eternally share the blame for a nuclear Iran.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to a joint session of
Congress revealed two significant gaps in the U.S. and Israeli
approaches to the Middle East, according to Dr. Robert Satloff, the
executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Let's go to the videotape.
Why do I trust Israeli intelligence a lot more than American intelligence on Iran? Maybe this has something to do with it.
What to do when no good options remain? If rebel advances have
finally convinced the Russians that Assad's days are indeed numbered, a
very slim chance may still exist for some form of last-ditch diplomacy
that salvages the core structures of a functioning state and averts the
black hole of uncontrolled collapse and chaos. The starting point would
have to be the rapid exit from power of Assad and his immediate clique,
either via voluntary exile abroad or some version of a palace coup. A
UN-brokered negotiation on a political transition would then ensue
between a remnant of the Alawite regime and the internationally-backed
opposition, leading hopefully to a ceasefire, some form of national
unity government, and eventually a new constitution with credible
guarantees for Syria's minority communities, followed by free and fair
elections.
No doubt this is a very tall order. What the Russians could actually
deliver with respect to Assad, even if they wanted to, is a major
question mark. More importantly, why the armed opposition, especially
its most radical elements, would ever agree at this point to stop short
of an outright military victory that ended with the storming of Assad's
palace is not at all apparent. Convincing them and the Syrian people
otherwise would require a unified, full-court diplomatic press by all
Syria's major outside stakeholders, equipped with a powerful panoply of
both pressures and inducements.
Short of that kind of diplomatic miracle, the outlook is extremely
bleak. Battening down the hatches and riding out the storm as Syria
fractures may be the best we can do. Working as closely as we can with
our key partners in the region and internationally, we should identify those armed groups that are prepared to work with us and have no truck with the most extreme Islamists. Strengthen
political and military alliances between them. Provide the humanitarian
aid and resources they need to consolidate and expand their popular
support, as well as defensive weaponry and training to provide local
security and fend off both the jihadists and Iran in the post-Assad era.
Critically, we need a viable plan for securing and/or neutralizing
Syria's chemical weapons, either in conjunction with these local forces
or on our own.
(emphasis mine)
Barry Rubin offers A detailed assessment of the forces likely to rule in a post-Assad Syria.
At the end Professor Rubin notes:
The
Libyan government gave 50 percent of the funds to finance the budget of
the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council (SNC) budget.
Since Libya is very much a U.S. client, it’s reasonable to conclude
that the Obama administration encouraged this generosity. Yet this money
was financing a Muslim Brotherhood front. A lot of arms have been
flowing from Libya to Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip
and to radical forces in Syria. Some claim that the U.S. government was
coordinating that traffic, though this has not yet been proven. But at
least indirectly, the U.S. government was helping to arm the Brotherhood
by overseeing Qatar and Turkey delivering weapons to the Brotherhood’s
militia without making any attempt to identify and arm moderate and
non-Islamist forces instead.
This means the Obama administration was using a barely disguised channel
to pay for a revolutionary Islamist movement seeking to take over
Syria. The fact that this group was also anti-American, anti-Semitic,
and genocidal toward Jews seems significant.
It would seem that the Obama administration is not being selective about its clients in Syria.
These dodges are sadly understandable. President Obama remains
determined not to intervene in the Syrian conflict or to provide arms to
the rebels, regardless of the cost in lives (40,000 and counting) or
the growing threat of the war to U.S. interests across the Middle East.
It’s undoubtedly embarrassing for the administration to concede that
even the use of Scud missiles will not draw a U.S. response.
Moreover, having declared that the use of chemical munitions would
provoke “consequences” while otherwise ruling out intervention, the
president signaled that every other weapon in the Syrian arsenal would
be tolerated. The non-response to the past week’s attacks confirms such a
conclusion and will likely encourage more strikes: The regime is
believed to possess hundreds of the missiles. Meanwhile, the Lebanese
militia Hezbollah, which reportedly acquired Scuds from Syria in 2010
for possible use against Israel, will likely draw its own lessons from
Mr. Obama’s passivity.
And the intelligence community does not believe the United States
will be supplanted as the world's only superpower by another country.
"The replacement of the United States by another global power and
erection of a new international order seems the least likely outcome in
this time period," the report projects.
The report argues that rising powers like China, India and Brazil are
not unified by any common ideology and are more focused on their
regional role. And the report warns against the consequences of a U.S.
withdrawal from the world's stage.
Via Meadia thinks the media are missing the real story here: Compared
to previous reports, this one gives an upgrade to American power, not a
downgrade. Four years ago, the National Intelligence Council released,
Global Trends 2025: Alternative Worlds, which predicted a far steeper
American decline, culminating in the collapse of the American age by
2025. To those keeping score at home, this means at least another five
years of Pax Americana. If this trend keeps up, these reports may soon
be talking about America’s superpower status extending well into the
second half of the 21st century.
We’ve seen experimental prosthetics in recent years that are
connected to the human neurological system. The Council says the link
between man and machine is about to get way more cyborg-like. “As
replacement limb technology advances, people may choose to enhance their
physical selves as they do with cosmetic surgery today. Future retinal
eye implants could enable night vision, and neuro-enhancements could
provide superior memory recall or speed of thought,” the Council writes.
“Brain-machine interfaces could provide ‘superhuman’ abilities,
enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not
previously available.”
Martin Kramer, though, notices a disturbing premise in the report in The NIC of Time:
So the suggestion in the NIC report, that Muslim anger against the
United States might soon be reduced to a kernel of resentment over US
support for Israel, is a species of wishful thinking. The United States
will continue to infect the Muslim world, even if its willingness or
ability to project hard power declines. The so-called “Arab Spring,”
which is so often hailed as the product of indigenous processes, is in
fact an inflammation produced by the most contagious of all viruses: the
idea of freedom, now linked inseparably to American-style democracy. As
long as Muslim societies remain internally divided over freedom and
democracy, there will be governments and factions that will stoke hatred
of America. In some places, American flags will be waved, but in others
American embassies will be burned. In either case, the United States
will be regarded, favorably or unfavorably, as the grinding wheel of
change in the world.
But a White House National Security Council spokesman disputed the Israeli reports, saying the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear activities had not changed since intelligence officials delivered testimony to Congress on the issue earlier this year.
"We believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government," the spokesman said. "We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon."
U.S. officials would not directly comment on whether there was a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which is a compilation of views of the various U.S. intelligence agencies.
For every Olympics since 1976, Spitzer has asked the IOC for a moment of silence at the opening ceremonies to honor the murdered Israelis. For every Olympics since 1976, she has been rebuffed. She says that the IOC's explanations have varied over the years, but none have been satisfactory. She says that she was once told that such a moment of silence wasn't in the Olympic protocol. Yet there have been acknowledgements of atrocities ranging from the Bosnian conflict to 9/11; as recently as the Vancouver Olympics, there was a moment of silence to honor the Georgian luger who died before the Games in a training run. Spitzer says she was told the moment of silence could spur a boycott among Arab countries. "If they don't understand the Olympic spirit, they should stay home," she says flatly. Similarly, Spitzer has also been told that such a moment of silence would politicize the Games. "Fine," she responded. "Just say they were Olympic athletes, part of the Olympic family." (Officials did stage a moment of silence for those 'who are not with us' during the opening ceremony.) In the spring, she met with IOC President Jacques Rogge -- who, ironically, had competed as a yachtsman in the Munich Olympics -- but again was told no. "The lame excuses have culminated," she says. "I hate to conclude this but [rejection of the moment of silence] is because they were from the wrong country and had the wrong religion."
The article illustrates the hatred expressed by the Muslim world for Israel. While it gives some space to the political cover used, it is sympathetic to Spitzer's effort.
Another woman said that she'd have observed the moment of silence. In this case it's gold medal winning gymnast Aly Raisman. Responding to why she used "Hava Nagila" as music for her floor exercise, Raisman explained: (via memeorandum):
“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.” Then Raisman stuck the landing. “If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”
Though it's probably better known for its annual swimsuit issue, Sports Illustrated occasionally features some investigative reporting. Ten years, one of this writers interview the mastermind of the Munich massacre, Abu Daoud. The interview included this:
Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
I don't know if there's any other source confirming this.
While I knew of Avery Brundage and I now know of Jacques Rogge, Peter Martino gives the history of another Olympic official who made excuses for hatred of Jews.
Meanwhile, Joods Actueel, a Jewish monthly magazine in Antwerp, Belgium, published details of the shameful anti-Semitic past of the International Olympic Committee and its former president, Count Henri de Baillet-Latour – like Rogge, a Belgian aristocrat. Baillet-Latour was IOC president from 1925 until his death in 1942. Joods Actueel delved into the Count's past. Journalists Geert Versyck and Guido Joris discovered that the Count and his wife were Nazi sympathizers. To keep this truth hidden, the IOC is trying to rewrite its own history, presenting Baillet-Latour as a critic of the Nazis rather than a supporter. Baillet-Latour was IOC President in 1931, when the decision was made to hold the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, the Nazis began to turn the Games into a propaganda tool to demonstrate to the world the superiority of the Aryan race. In 1933, Jews were barred from civil service in Germany and Jewish athletes were excluded from sports clubs. Even Gretel Bergmann, the high-jumper who held the German record, was banned -- because she was a Jew -- from participating in the Olympics.
2) We wouldn't want to make the same mistake again
David Ignatius in a column, The Myth of the Mad Mullahs, celebrating the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran had stopped working towards producing a nuclear weapon, wrote:
The debate about what the NIE should mean for U.S. policy toward Iran is just beginning. But for the intelligence community, this rebuttal of conventional wisdom will restore some integrity after the Iraq WMD debacle. In challenging the previous certitudes about Iran and the Bomb, the NIE recalls the admonition many decades ago by the godfather of CIA analysts, Sherman Kent: "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one's bigotry, and to do a little conscientious introspection."
Challah Hu Akbar quotes from Ha'aretz that “recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report on the Iranian nuclear program, which shares Israel's view that Iran has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability.”
Wouild Ignatius say that failing to assess an enemy's capabilities correctly would constitute a debacle?
By any measure, I am not a Jew. I was not born to a Jewish woman. I was not raised nor educated as a Jew; therefore I do not, as Adam Garfinkle might argue, see the world through the eyes of a Jew, evincing Jewish moral sensibilities or exhibiting any sign of Jewish historical memory. But I do have the power of recall, and I do, as a non-Jew, recognize vicious anti-Semitism when I see it. The Iranian government is as anti-Semitic as the Third Reich. Listen to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and you hear strains of Adolf Hitler.
I do not know where King stands regarding Israel. But this is a remarkable essay that makes no excuses for Iranian hatred of Jews. It is a far cry from what we'd see in the opinion pages of the New York Times where Roger Cohen excused the tyranny of the Iranian regime and editorials portray Israel as a complication to American effort to counter Iran.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday said that the latest US National Intelligence Estimate is closer than ever to Israel's own intelligence estimates on Iran. The latest US estimate, he told Israel Radio, gives much more urgency to stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation.
"We and the Americans agreed not to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and all options are on the table," Barak said. Ultimately, however, it is the Israeli government that will make decisions regarding its security and future.
The defense minister also addressed criticism of the government's perceived decision-making process, saying that the cabinet would need to approve any military strike on Iran. "The description in the media as if two people are sitting around and hatching attack plans is utterly ridiculous," he proclaimed.
President Barack Obama recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report on the Iranian nuclear program, which shares Israel's view that Iran has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability, Western diplomats and Israeli officials have informed Haaretz.
This NIE report on Iran was supposed to have been submitted to Obama a few weeks ago, but it was revised to include new and alarming intelligence information about military components of Iran's nuclear program. Haaretz has learned that the report's conclusions are quite similar to those drawn by Israel's intelligence community.
The NIE report contends that Iran has made surprising, notable progress in the research and development of key components of its military nuclear program.
Will the new estimate convince President Obama to act? I'd say that's doubtful. But it might make it difficult for Obama not to support an Israeli attack on Iran, particularly if the report is leaked (as parts apparently have been) when the appropriate time comes.
And now with Iran, intelligence judgments remain anchored to a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that in 2003, Tehran had "halted" its nuclear weapon design and weaponization work. That estimate was based not on the absence of evidence that such work was ongoing but rather on evidence that it was not. And despite some suspicious and troubling Iranian activity since then, the estimate has survived largely intact, under three subsequent heads of national intelligence and of the CIA.
So there we are. The challenge for American intelligence now is to inform the president of an Iranian decision to weaponize its nuclear stockpile with sufficient confidence and in sufficient time for him to decide to launch a pre-emptive war in one of the world's most sensitive and volatile regions.
It's hard to imagine a higher bar, especially since building the "sufficient confidence" will almost certainly eat into the "sufficient time." And especially since, when that last situation room meeting is held, the intelligence will probably not be at that courtroom evidentiary standard of beyond all reasonable doubt.
The president showed that he could act in the face of ambiguity when he launched the Abbottabad raid to kill Osama bin Laden. This one will be even more difficult.
Read the whole thing. If Romney wins, is Bolton Secretary of State? From what I've seen and heard over the last several weeks, it's more likely to be Hayden or someone of his ilk.
Today, as suspicions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have provoked tough sanctions and threats of military confrontation, top administration officials have said that Iran still has not decided to pursue a weapon, reflecting the intelligence community’s secret analysis. But if that assessment changes, it could lift a brake set by President Obama, who has not ruled out military options as a last resort to prevent Iran gaining nuclear arms.
Publicly and privately, American intelligence officials express confidence in the spy agencies’ assertions. Still, some acknowledge significant intelligence gaps in understanding the intentions of Iran’s leaders and whether they would approve the crucial steps toward engineering a bomb, the most covert aspect of one of the most difficult intelligence collection targets in the world.
Much of what analysts sift through are shards of information that are ambiguous or incomplete, sometimes not up to date, and that typically offer more insight about what the Iranians are not doing than evidence of what they are up to.
As a result, officials caution that they cannot offer certainty. “I’d say that I have about 75 percent confidence in the assessment that they haven’t restarted the program,” said one former senior intelligence official.
Another former intelligence official ... added, “We’re not on the ground, and not having our people on the ground to catch nuance is a problem.”
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes, but American intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have picked up evidence in recent years that some Iranian research activities that may be weapons-related have continued since 2003, officials said. That information has not been significant enough for the spy agencies to alter their view that the weapons program has not been restarted.
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, agrees with the American intelligence assessments, even while Israeli political leaders have been pushing for quick, aggressive action to block Iran from becoming what they describe as an existential threat to the Jewish state.
“Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program,” said one former senior American intelligence official, who, like others for this article, would speak only on the condition of anonymity about classified information. “There is not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts.”
I cannot believe that the Mossad believes this. Israel, as the article goes on to note, has 'assets' on the ground in Iran - mostly from the opposition MEK which is banned as a terror group in the US - but the US discounts that information out of fear of repeating its mistake with Ahmad Chalabi in the run-up to the Iraq war.
But I find it hard to believe that the US believes this either. You don't move innocent civilian nuclear activity 200 meters underground at an enormous cost. What happened at Parchin a few months ago? What was destroyed? Why is Iran now trying to remove nuclear waste from the facility?
I find it hard to believe that the US actually believes this, and there is no way that the Mossad does. Recall that even Meir Dagan only argued for a delay - he didn't argue that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. And he said that there are many more facilities than four.
The paper's report is based on "Western intelligence agencies sources," and says that the test, in fact, refutes US intelligence assessments suggesting there is no "hard evidence" that Iran is building nuclear weapons.
...
The Die Welt noted that evidence of the 2010 nuclear tests in North Korea was published in early February in Nature Magazine.
According to the report, Swedish nuclear physicist Lars-Erik de Geer analyzed data "showing the presence of radioisotopes that betrayed a uranium bomb explosion."
"After a year of work, (de Geer) concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010 that caused explosions in the range of 50–200 tons of TNT equivalent.
"The types and ratios of isotopes detected… suggest that North Korea was testing materials and techniques intended to boost the yield of its weapons," the report said.
The Nature article is here. It does not mention Iran.
Former Iranian revolutionary Guard Reza Khalili reports that Iran has its finger on a nuclear trigger, which it has completed on its way to obtaining nuclear weapons.
Sources within the Revolutionary Guards reveal that the work on the trigger is taking place covertly under the control of the Guards in the cities of Darkhovin and Isfahan.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the main brain behind the Iranian nuclear bomb program, is guiding the project. Fakhrizadeh reportedly reports directly to Khamenei and is under tight security because of the assassination of other Iranian nuclear scientists.
The Islamic regime has rejected several requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency to interview him. The U.N. nuclear watchdog believes Fakhrizadeh was responsible for the project “111,” which would convert highly enriched uranium into metal for a nuclear warhead and its reentry design.
The IAEA last November indicated that Iran had experimented with firing multiple detonators with a high level of simultaneity. The report also indicated that Iran as early as 2003 began a large-scale experiment to initiate a high-explosive charge in the form of a hemispherical shell. This indicates work on a nuclear bomb.
According to Sepahonline, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian nuclear bomb progress is overseen by the supreme leader’s military adviser, Rahim Safavi, a former chief commander of the Guards, and a cleric, Mohsen Ghomi, who has communicated the will of the supreme leader for a speedy completion of the project. These activities are taking place at several secret locations unknown to the IAEA. One location reportedly is in the city of Mobarake, south west of Isfahan.
Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the newly established Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board, concludes from IAEA intelligence that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is very advanced.
”Iran has already developed hemispherical explosive lenses and highly precise detonators,” Pry states, “a clear indicator Iran is working on, or has already built, an implosion-type nuclear weapon. The United States used an implosion atomic bomb during World War II to destroy Nagasaki.”
I want to point out two things. First, note the part that I highlighted. What does that tell you about the infamous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate in the US that took a military strike out of George W. Bush's hands? Yes, you got it, the 2007 NIE was false. Someday, it would be worth an investigation into who falsified it and why.
Second, Khalili reports that Iran already has technology to attack the United States, including an ICBM with a range of more than 6,000 miles. So make sure you read the whole thing.
Iran has admitted in the past that it works on explosives at Parchin, and seven years ago it briefly allowed I.A.E.A. inspectors into the site to look around. But it insisted the work was entirely on conventional weapons, and the inspectors found no evidence to contradict those statements. “We took environmental samples, saw equipment, and didn’t notice any nuclear signatures at that stage,” said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector at the agency, who is now at Harvard. “Most of the high-explosive test installations we saw were still under construction.” But something has changed in the ensuing years. The new Parchin intelligence emerged from a series of satellite photographs, documents, records of equipment sales and interviews with defectors and outside experts whom the Iranians appeared to have consulted. Some of that information came from the United States, Israel and Europe; the agency says it is publishing only information it could confirm. Such accusations are always risky. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell came to regret the case he made about mobile biological weapons labs and other suspected sites in Iraq, and that is one reason the Obama administration wants the I.A.E.A. to take the lead. It has credibility that Washington does not.
I thought that Washington's credibility went up after President Bush was replaced by President Obama.
The report's main importance is that it will emphasize that Iran has continued its various activities to produce nuclear weapons since 2004, and therefore the report will also invalidate the U.S. intelligence report from 2007 that stated Iran had stopped its work on nuclear weapons development in 2003.
What? The 2007 NIE was wrong? How could that be. David Ignatius wrote in Myth of the Mad Mullahs:
Meanwhile, the intelligence analysts responsible for Iran were given new encouragement to think outside the box. To break the lock-step culture that allowed the disastrous mistake on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Deputy Director of National Intelligence Thomas Fingar ordered that analysts be given more information about sources and, rather than trying to fit information into preexisting boxes to prove a case, they should simply explain what it meant. All these strands converged in the bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that was released Monday. That document was as close to a U-turn as one sees in the intelligence world. The community dropped its 2005 judgment that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons" and instead said, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" because of international pressure. The secret intelligence that produced this reversal came from multiple channels -- human sources as well as intercepted communications -- that arrived in June and July. At that time, a quite different draft of the Iran NIE was nearly finished. But the "volume and character" of the new information was so striking, says a senior official, that "we decided we've got to go back." It was this combination of data from different sources that gave the analysts "high confidence" the covert weapons program had been stopped in 2003. This led them to reject an alternative scenario (one of six) pitched by a "red team" of counterintelligence specialists that the new information was a deliberate Iranian deception.
To be sure there werethose, at the time who were skeptical of the NIE. I wonder if Ignatius will admit his error.
2) Don't be cross
An editorial in the Washington Post blasts the cynicism of the legal campaign against Catholic University. In The Campaign against Catholic University, the editors write:
It’s a little hard to take the charges seriously considering no one actually claims to be aggrieved. Mr. Banzhaf acknowledged to The Post’s Michelle Boorstein that he had received no complaint from Muslim students but was acting on the basis of a 2010 Post article (which, to our mind, painted an overall positive experience of Muslim students at Catholic). The university has received no complaints from Muslim students and, in fact, reports a doubling of its Muslim enrollment since 2007, from 56 to 122. “Muslim college students are not hothouse flowers that need protection. If they had concerns, we would have heard them,” Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told us. Someone who would be discomfited by outward signs of religion would presumably not choose to attend a Catholic university. Institutions with faith-based connections are under no requirement to change them to accommodate other faiths. Catholic should be mindful of the rights of its non-Catholic students and ensure fair treatment. If other religions are allowed to associate — which appears to be the case with Catholic sanctioning the Jewish Law Students Association — then Muslim students should be afforded the same courtesy. A university spokesman told us the JLSA is primarily cultural in nature, is tied to the study of law and does not involve proselytizing, a central concern of a university. There had been a Muslim law student group until its officers graduated and no students came forward to lead it.
The Washington Post continues the leaks of the IAEA report on Iran. According to the report, which is based upon interviews with Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings, Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles.
Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.
The officials, citing secret intelligence provided over several years to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the records reinforce concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 — when, U.S. intelligence agencies believe, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.
...
But some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal reports. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.
“The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,” Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.
According to Albright, one key breakthrough that has not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as an R265 generator. The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, Albright said.
According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.
Danilenko’s role was judged to be so critical that IAEA investigators devoted considerable effort to obtaining his cooperation, the two officials said. The scientist acknowledged his role but said he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects, the sources said.
There is no evidence that Russian government officials knew of Danilenko’s activities in Iran. E-mails requesting comment from Russian officials in Washington and Moscow were not returned. Efforts to reach Danilenko through his former company were not successful.
Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work — some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say. Additional help appears to have come from the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose design for a device known as a neutron initiator was found in Iran, the sources said. Khan is known to have provided nuclear blueprints to Libya that included a neutron initiator, a device that shoots a stream of atomic particles into a nuclear weapon’s fissile core at the start of the nuclear chain reaction.
The report also concludes - surprise - that Iran never stopped developing nuclear weapons from 2003-07, as was claimed by the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which took the military option on Iran out of George W. Bush's hands. Someday, when there's time, an investigation ought to be opened into who was behind that report and why.
New National Intelligence Estimate: Iran is half pregnant
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress on Wednesday regarding the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The estimate seems to have trouble deciding whether Iran is pursuing a weapon or not. But pursuit of nuclear weapons is like pregnancy: You can't be half pregnant.
A comprehensive new U.S. intelligence report concludes that Iran has resumed research on key components for a nuclear weapon, but that the slow and scattered nature of the effort reflects renewed debate within the government over whether to build a bomb, U.S. officials said.
The finding represents a significant, if subtle, shift from the main conclusion of a controversial 2007 estimate that Iran had halted its weaponization work.
In finding that Iran has again begun taking steps toward designing a nuclear warhead, the new estimate is likely to be seen as erasing doubt that the earlier document created about Iran's intent.
But the new report reaches no firm conclusions about when Iran might acquire the bomb. The classified estimate has already triggered debate among American officials over whether Iran's apparent hesitation is the result of U.S.-backed sanctions meant to derail any weapons program.
Overall, the National Intelligence Estimate concludes that Iran is conducting "early-stage R&D work on aspects of the manufacturing process for a nuclear weapon," said a U.S. official familiar with the report. At the same time, the estimate describes "serious debate within the Iranian regime . . . on how to proceed."
One has to wonder how much pressure was placed on the intelligence agencies not to come right out and say that Iran is weaponizing.
New National Intelligence Estimate on Iran complete
There's a new National Intelligence Estimate out on Iran, which walks back the conclusions of the absurd 2007 estimate, which claimed that Iran had given up the development of nuclear weapons. Of course, the new estimate won't outright contradict the old one, so as protect the old boys who did the earlier estimate, and you and I won't be able to read it unless you were able to read the entire old version. There's only going to be a classified version.
"It does exist," House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) said in an interview with The Cable. Rogers said the administration was right to take its time to revise the 2007 NIE before releasing the updated version. "Intelligence is a fluid thing, sometimes you get great stuff and sometimes you don't get great stuff to make good conclusions. I think they were prudent in what they've done."
House Foreign Affairs ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA) told The Cable he had heard the new NIE would walk back the controversial conclusions of the 2007 version, but that he hadn't read it yet. Regardless, he said, the 2007 Iran NIE was now obsolete and discredited.
"Nobody had been paying attention to the older NIE. A few people on the outside focused on it because they didn't want us to go down the sanctions route but neither the administration nor the Congress paid it much attention," Berman said. "I thought the NIE estimate then was a faulty one because it focused on some aspects of weaponization -- even as Iran was continuing to enrich."
Revelations that Iran had a secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom, which occurred after the release of the 2007 NIE, were further proof that the Iranian regime was pursing nuclear weapons, Berman said. Regardless, the Obama administration has disregarded the 2007 Iran NIE, he said.
"For a year and a half the administration has been convinced that Iran has been pursuing a nuclear weapon. That's what they whole sanctions push is based on," Berman said. "There can be no serious doubt that Iran wants to have a nuclear weapons capability."
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), a former intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy, told The Cable, "The 2007 NIE was a mistake," and this document appears to be more realistic. He urged the intelligence community to take a less technical and more comprehensive look at the Iranian leadership's actions when making such judgments.
"My hope is that the current leaders of the intelligence community look not just at technical details and also comment regularly on Iran's leaders," Kirk said. "In Intelligence 101 we are taught to measure both capability and intent politically, and the intent here on the part of the Iranian regime is pretty clear."
Unfortunately, the key decisions about the report are being made by James Clapper (pictured), the Director of National Intelligence who, last week, called the Muslim Brotherhood 'secular.'
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
