The Iranian threat

An article in the Washington Post suggests that Iran is not undertaking a national effort to build commercial turkey farms, day care centers, and convenience stores.

Iranian engineers have completed sophisticated drawings of a deep subterranean shaft, according to officials who have examined classified documents in the hands of U.S. intelligence for more than 20 months.

Complete with remote-controlled sensors to measure pressure and heat, the plans for the 400-meter tunnel appear designed for an underground atomic test that might one day announce Tehran's arrival as a nuclear power, the officials said.
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Drawings of the unbuilt test site, not disclosed publicly before, appear to U.S. officials to signal at least the ambition to test a nuclear explosive. But U.S. and U.N. experts who have studied them said the undated drawings do not clearly fit into a larger picture. Nowhere, for example, does the word "nuclear" appear on them. The authorship is unknown, and there is no evidence of an associated program to acquire, assemble and construct the components of such a site.

"The diagram is consistent with a nuclear test-site schematic," one senior U.S. source said, noting that the drawings envision a test control team parked a safe 10 kilometers -- more than six miles -- from the shaft. As far as U.S. intelligence knows, the idea has not left the drawing board.

Other suggestive evidence is cloaked in similar uncertainty. Contained in a laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004 are designs by a firm called Kimeya Madon for a small-scale facility to produce uranium gas, the construction of which would give Iran a secret stock that could be enriched for fuel or for bombs.

Last weekend the IAEA voted to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. The resolution is here (in PDF), and contains language that illustrates why we don't put diplomats in charge of militaries.

Underlines that outstanding questions can best be resolved and confidence built in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's programme by Iran responding positively to the calls for confidence building measures which the Board has made on Iran,
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Calls on Iran to understand that there is a lack of confidence in Iran’s intentions in seeking to develop a fissile material production capability against the background of Iran's record on safeguards as recorded in previous Resolutions,

The problem is not a lack of confidence. The problem is not trying to pound the square peg of evidence into the round hole of assuming Iran is building an exclusively peaceful program.

The problem is Iran has made every indication it wants nuclear weaponsn and will use them as a hedge around its position as the planet's chief exporter of terrorism.

Here is a most informative powerpoint presentation (HT: Security Watchtower) explaining how Iran's program is more consistent with a weapons program, and not a "peaceful" program.

As noted, Iran’s uranium resources cannot support the peaceful program Iran says it is pursuing. However, Iran’s uranium resources are more than sufficient to support a nuclear weapons capability.

Regime Change Iran notes the following from the Iranian press:

Kayhan, the mouthpiece newspaper belonging to Uber-Mullah, Khamnei, in its Tuesday, Feb. 7th edition called for taking the IAEA inspectors hostage and prosecuting them for espionage. The item read: "Now that the Europeans have gone back on their pledges to us and have even begun to beat, even the Americans, in referring our nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council, the regimes authorities must teach them and the spies they call "inspectors of the International Atomic Agency" a profound and interminable lesson...so much so that they cannot even consider taking one breath."

The item also clearly indicated that "captivity and slaughter" of the IAEA inspectors inside Iran would be an integral part of "the nuclear revolution of the Islamic realm".

This regime is a threat. We had best deal with it now. If it means high oil prices, if it means open conflict, the societies of the West need to be prepared to confront this malignant power.

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