It’s hard to explain the wind shift coming out of our intelligence community regarding Iran. Why the sudden revelation that the Mullahs haven’t been pursuing nukes – not since 2003 anyway?
At the same time, or just before, we have had news that the Israelis attacked what has been called a reactor under construction or an actual nuclear weapons assembly plant in Syria – a putative Iran ally. What happened isn’t entirely clear, but something did. And no one made much of a squawk, suggesting culpability.
Then Syria turns up at the Annapolis Conference, to the apparent consternation of Iran.
Add into the mix the announcement (by the more or less Shiite Iraqi government, supposedly sympathetic to Iran) that the US will keep upwards of fifty thousand troops on bases in Iraq in close proximity to Iran in perpetuity.
Excuse me if I think there is more here than meets the eye. My old and fraying mystery writer hat tells me some kind of deal was struck.
But then I could be dead wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time…. or the hundredth.
UPDATE: Another possibility, suggested by my colleague Jose Guardia, is that this announcement is a ploy to make the mullahs appear weak internally (they don’t have the guts to build bomb). This is an interestng theory since Ahmadinejad can scarcely make a public announcement that “We’re doing it!”
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9 Comments
1. dclydew:The other option may be that Iran presents the insane, maniacal, zealot face to their own people… but are rather savvy behind closed doors. If the NIE is correct (who knows), and they stopped any plans to build a bomb in 2003, then their actions over the past 4 years could be explained by trying to look tough to their own people. They may not want to cooperate, because they don’t want CNN headlines to read “Iran Proves it has no WMD plans” (in their eyes it may read “Iran Proves it has no Balls”). In a nation where an undercurrent of revolution is obvious, looking at all weak may be a death knell.
As for Syria, my guess is that Assad might be trying to play both sides of the fence. Sure Syria showed up at Annapolis (represented by a minor bureaucrat). Now they get to say “We tried to help”, but at the same time, they can say to Iran “We just sent Bob over for some face time”. My guess is that Iran and Syria may have already dealt with that behind closed doors before Annapolis started. If I were in Bashir’s shoes, that’s what I would have done anyway.
I sure would like to know what Israel’s target was though… too bad the answers seem to be coming from pundits rather than useful intel.
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:12 am 2. Lem:“In view of this, the intelligence and scientific communities felt that any public announcement might lead to significant cultural shock and disorientation.”
2001 A Space Odyssey (c-125,126)
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:15 am 3. dclydew:Lem:
LOL, very nice.
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:19 am 4. photoncourier.blogspot.com:If they weren’t interested in building a bomb, why on earth would they be spending huge amounts of money of centrifuges? Surely, from a strictly economic point of view it would make more sense for them to invest money in oil-based process plants (chemical & plastics plants, refineries, etc) to get more value out of their crude oil, rather than developing commercial nuclear power.
Also: I just saw somebody claiming that the Iranian centrifuges are only good enough to produce reactor-grade uranium, not weapons-grade uranium. But my understanding–and I am by no means an expert in this area–is that higher-grade fuel is produced by running the feedstock through *multiple* centrifuges, over and over again, rather than by using “better” centrifuges to produce the higher-grade product. Can anyone shed light on this?
Dec 4, 2007 - 12:07 pm 5. Anthony (Los Angeles):Michael Ledeen has some (acerbic) thought on this latest NIE over at Pajamas: http://tinyurl.com/2pbjfd
In short, he thinks it’s a crock.
Dec 4, 2007 - 12:16 pm 6. dclydew:photoncourier.blogspot.com:
IIRC, its a bit of both, you have to run the fuel through multiple centrifuges, but the centrifuges msut be of a specific quality, a higher quality than what’s needed for fuel.
As for the other, if we assume that Iran is really this desperate to get nuclear fuel… then they must know something we don’t about the oil supply… otherwise, their reasons seem suspect.
Dec 4, 2007 - 12:47 pm 7. j. marzan:it’s either a deal has been made between Washignton and Iran to lay off the iranian gov’ts in exchange for cooperation in stemming the flow of arms and iranian agents to iraq via iran.
either that or this iran nuke talk is a zionist conspiracy neocon plot.
Dec 4, 2007 - 6:58 pm 8. j. marzan:the intelligence agencies got it wrong on iraq’s WMD (”Slam dunk”), and got it wrong on north korea’s Nukes.
Will their current estimate on iran’s nukes be right THIS TIME?
Dec 4, 2007 - 7:00 pm 9. Gideon7:We have to respect the US intelligence community. After all their constant vigilence alerted us to,
- India’s nuke test. Oops, skip that.
- Pakistan’s nuke test. Ok, not that.
- Syria’s nuke factory. Uhm, the Israelis got that one.
- Libya’s procuring U235 until Gaddaffi quit. Forgot that one..
- North Korea breaking the 1994 nuke treaty. Well..
Ok, nevermind.
Dec 6, 2007 - 11:23 am