WHY WOULD ZERO WANT IRAN TO HAVE NUKES?

Iran could start building a nuclear weapon "in a matter of months," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report last Wednesday (11/12).

Scientists at a top secret facility in Parchin are building high tech precision detonators essential for a nuclear device, and developing a uranium core for a nuclear warhead, the IAEA report said.

Iranian scientists also are working on ways to mount a nuclear warhead onto its Shahab 3 missiles, the UN agency said.

"The facts lay out a pretty overwhelming case that this was a pretty sophisticated nuclear weapons effort aimed at miniaturizing a warhead for a ballistic missile," U.S. arms control expert David Albright told Reuters.

"The level of detail is unbelievable," agreed a Western diplomat who was quoted anonymously by the New York Times. 

The report was a public about face for the IAEA.  Iran is not going to produce a weapon anytime soon, and the threat posed by its atomic program has been exaggerated, IAEA Director General Mohammed el Baradei said in a September, 2009 interview shortly before he stepped down to return to his native Egypt.

Mr. el Baradei repeated this view this January in an interview with the Austrian Press Agency. (The IAEA is based in Vienna.)

Much of the information about the Iranian nuclear program was contained in a 2008 report prepared by the IAEA staff which Mr. el Baradei suppressed.

Some Israeli officials think Mr. el Baradei was an Iranian agent.

"He was dishonest his entire term," Uzi Eilam, former director of Israel‘s Atomic Energy Agency, told Ynet News.  "He is the one who stopped the Security Council from imposing serious sanctions, providing the Iranians with precious time."

Mr. el Baradei wasn’t alone in spreading misinformation.  In that January interview, Mr. el Baradei noted a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 had concluded Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

"Today, this assessment is still correct," he said.

Obviously it isn’t.  All the Iranians had to do to fool the U.S. Intelligence Community was to change the name of the government agency housing it, said intelligence writer Thomas Joscelyn.

Until 2003, Iran‘s nuclear activities operated under an umbrella called the Amad Plan, he wrote in the Weekly Standard Nov. 9.  That plan was "stopped abruptly" late that year.  But nuclear weapons development continued under a new organization, the Section for Advanced Development and Technologies.  The Amad Plan and SADAT were headed by the same guy, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

National Intelligence Estimates are prepared by the National Intelligence Council, senior officials drawn from the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

An NIE "represents the Intelligence Community’s most authoritative and coordinated written assessment of a specific national security issue," says the Council on Foreign Relations.

The U.S. was surprised by North Korea‘s invasion of South Korea in 1950.  The NIE process was begun to keep that from happening again.  But it didn’t prevent the Intelligence Community from grossly underestimating Iraq‘s nuclear weapons program before the first Gulf War, or grossly overestimating it before the second.

Incompetence and stupidity may not be enough to explain why the 2007 NIE on Iran was so far off-base.  It was written chiefly by three former State Department officers who had reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," an intelligence source told the Wall Street Journal.

At the time the NIE was leaked, the Bush administration was considering military action to stop Iran‘s nuclear weapons program.  The leak put a stop to that, and also to the Bush administration’s efforts to get the UN to impose strong economic sanctions.

"The new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy," said then Sen. Barack Obama.

Iran has made so much progress in the four years since that wildly erroneous NIE that now only military action can keep Iran from getting the bomb.

In a poll taken before the IAEA report made clear the urgency of the situation, Americans supported U.S. military action against Iran, 50 percent to 44 percent.

It’s unclear whether our president shares his countrymen’s alarm.  Mr. Obama promoted two of the three authors of the erroneous NIE, and likely would have promoted the third had he not retired.

It’s enough to make one wonder if Obama wants Iran to get the bomb with which to nuke Israel.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.