Redstate

By Rick Moran Posted in Spotlight Blogs | User Blogs — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

More selective leaking from our friends at the Central Intelligence Agency:

A classifed draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.

Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.

A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.

"If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Of course, the CIA might be wrong - or at least this analysis may be flawed. There are probably other assessments that are much less sanguine regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions but no one leaked those reports. They're a secret.

And I suppose Iran's known and verified relationship with Big Daddy A.Q. Khan - father of Pakistan's atomic bomb - and his travelling nuclear arms bazzar was just a coincidence - a happenstance of fortunate circumstance. Besides, Khan wasn't selling nukes, he was selling ice cream machines.

Except that this document discovered by the IAEA, proves that either Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons or those ice cream machines have one helluva kick:

Read on . . .

A document obtained by Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The finding was made in a report prepared for presentation to the 35-nation IAEA board when it meets, starting Thursday, on whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.

The report was made available in full to The Associated Press.

First mention of the documents was made late last year in a longer IAEA report. At that time, the agency said only that the papers showed how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms."

The agency refused to make a judgment on what possible uses such casts would have. But diplomats familiar with the probe into Iran's nuclear program said then that the papers apparently were instructions on how to mold highly enriched grade uranium into the core of warheads.

In the brief report obtained Tuesday, however, the agency said bluntly that the 15-page document showing how to cast fissile uranium into metal was "related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components."

Iran is probably claiming the document was accidentally stuck in between instructions on how to make a killer Rocky Road or maybe a sublime Moose Tracks.

Most of the rest of the planet believes that Iran's heavy water reactors at Natanz and Arak serve no other purpose than to manufacture plutonium, a waste product of the nuclear reactions at the plants. Or perhaps the CIA believes that the heavy water will be used to create a particularly tasty variation of "Magilla Vanilla."

And all of this secrecy and subterfuge surrounding their nuclear efforts is almost certainly not due to the fact that they wish to hide the development of a weapons program but rather because their recipe for "Black Cherry Surprise" promises to sweep the world.

All kidding aside, one point made by the assessment is probably correct; Iran is nowhere near having the capability to enrich uranium to the 85-90% necessary in order to build a bomb. And the heavy water reactors are years away from generating enough power to manufacture enough plutonium for a single weapon (although the 40 Megawatt facility at Arak promises to be a veritable plutonium assembly line once its fully operational and producing).

The key to the assessment is that the CIA has found no "firm" evidence of a secret Iranian nuke program. There is plenty of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that they are, in fact, working hard to build the bomb. But the fact remains that there is no documentary or photographic "smoking gun" that would confirm our suspicions one way or another.

To proceed on the assumption that they aren't building a bomb would be stupid. To bomb them without some idea of what facilities to hit would be equally dumb. And while negotiations would almost certainly be a waste of time, protocol, tradition, and common sense demands that we talk directly to the Iranians at some point. For this reason - and because they are at least 3 and probably more years from even getting close to succeeding - it would seem politic of us to sit down with the Iranians and discuss nukes, Iraq, and other regional issues that impact our security.

Besides, maybe the CIA will discover Iran's secret frozen custurd capability. That would make talking to the mullahs worthwhile.