Sanitized For Their Protection

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant.

News of last month's cleansing operation comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board meets in Vienna today to decide whether Iran should be reported to the United Nations Security Council for failing to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

According to western intelligence sources, more than 7,000 trees which may have contained incriminating nuclear traces have been lost in a popular parkland area in the city near the Lavizan atomic research centre.

Chopping down 7,000 trees? That's a pretty curious step. Maybe they were dealing with an infestation of Dutch Elm disease? Parisitic beetles? But the Iranians apparently believe that the best way to create a park is to destroy one:

Recent tests in the area by scientists working for the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran (AEOI) showed unusually high concentrations of uranium contamination in the leaves and branches of trees surrounding the site. The scientists unanimously recommended that preparations should be made in case IAEA inspectors decided to conduct further visits.

The order to cut down the trees was given by Mohamed Baker Khalibaf, the mayor of Teheran, who is close to President Mahmoud Ahmadnijehad. The official explanation for the destruction of the trees was to create a national park.

Others blogging: In the Bullpen and Winds of Change.

UPDATE:
Yet, while they're busy trying to cover their tracks on tipping off inspectors (and not doing a great job), there are yet more pieces of evidence linking Iran to the ongoing conflict in Iraq - via Confederate Yankee:

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

This is a regime that is desperate - they're rushing to get ahead of the US - both in terms of pushing the US out of Iraq sooner than we're prepared to do, and to obtain sufficient nuclear materials to build nuclear weapons [that's plural folks]. The mullahs figure that once they go nuclear with a single weapon, they'll have the ability to blackmail the US, Europeans, and pretty much the entire Middle East, and buy yet more time to stockpile weapons. They've already gotten more time than they should have because the Europeans bought the line the mullahs were feeding them. Russia is still indulging the Iranians, which may buy them time but not immunity from future attack.

So, the endgame is to have a full stockpile of nuclear weapons, and are figuring that if they can push the US out of Iraq, they'll have one less obstacle to reach that goal since it takes boots on the ground to make sure that all of the nuclear facilities are hit and eliminated.