US shares intel on Iran

The US has recently shared new sensitive information with the International Atomic Energy Agency on key aspects of Iran's nuclear program that Washington says shows Teheran was directly engaged in trying to make an atomic weapon, diplomats said Thursday ... AND Washington also gave the IAEA permission to confront Iran with at least some of the evidence in an attempt to pry details out of the Islamic republic on the activities, as part of the UN nuclear watchdog's attempts to investigate Iran's suspicious nuclear past. (Jerusalem Post)

The average American's response to the above report is, "What took you so long?" If we have the intelligence, let's use it. Or will sharing the information give away secrets, identify sources, or otherwise hurt our surveillance in the future?

Following Israel's bombing of a Syrian site late last year, and media reports citing unidentified US officials as saying the target was a nuclear installation, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei turned in vain to the US in asking for details on what was struck, said a diplomat who - like others - asked for anonymity in exchange for divulging confidential information.

Already shared over the past two years by the U.S. was material on a laptop computer reportedly smuggled out of Iran. In 2005, US intelligence assessed that information as indicating that Teheran had been working on details of nuclear weapons, including missile trajectories and ideal altitudes for exploding warheads.

After declassification, US intelligence also was forwarded on two other issues - the "Green Salt Project" - a plan the US alleges links diverse components of a nuclear weapons program, including uranium enrichment, high explosives testing and a missile re-entry vehicle, and material in Iran's possession showing how to mold uranium metal into warhead form. (more)

Just a reminder, via Strategic Forecast:

On Iran and Iraq, Tehran has announced that Iran and the United States will hold a new round of talks on the future of Iraq at some point next week.

This would be the fourth in a series of meetings; the most recent meeting happened last August. These meetings have been scheduled and canceled before, and because who will attend this go-round remains unsettled, these talks may never get off the ground. More significant, no Iranian president has visited Iraq since the Khomeini revolution. If this visit took place, it would represent a substantial evolution. It also is not something that would happen unopposed if the United States did not want it to; by contrast, the Iraqi government lacks much of a say in the matter because it does not have that much room for maneuver. So we can say this much: Nothing has happened yet, but the Iranians have repositioned themselves as favoring some sort of diplomatic initiative from their side and the Americans so far have not done anything to discourage them. [snip]

If the Iranian president does visit Iraq and the United States makes no effort to block him, that will be the signal that some sort of accommodation has been reached. (Strategic Forecast)

Comments

[Rastaman]

My "average American response" is that we should be blowing their installations to bits any day now.

Everyone knows that if the Iranians are left unchecked, that they'll use nukes on Israel. Even if they didn't (unlikely) their having nukes would make them the bullies of the Middle East and they would attempt to dominate all the other Arab/Islamic nations, with the same ultimate catastrophic result and the same stoppage of the flow of oil.

Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons under any circumstances. If I can see that, then so can world leaders. The question is, what are they going to do about it?

Rasta

[Mushy]

Somehow that range map is comforting to me...maybe I'm just wishful...who knows.