Iran's Endgame

What is Iran up to? The experts don't know what the endgame is, but they certainly can see what they've been up to.

They're busy inside Iraq, as Bill Roggio details here.

The issue of Iranian complicity in the Iraqi insurgency has been contentious since US and Iraqi forces began heavily targeting the Iranian networks in late 2006. While news reports have touted Iran's role in reducing the violence, US military officers believe Iran still serves as a source of weapons and fighters in Iraq.

The Long War Journal has spoken to several mid-level and senior US military and intelligence officers, all of whom have declined to go on the record due to the sensitive nature of the Iranian issue. Based on these conversations as well as other information, The Long War Journal has learned the nature of the Qods Force operations in Iraq and how they move resources into the country.

Suffice to say, had this reporting been done at the New York Times or Washington Post, not only would more people know what's going on, but it should be a Page One blockbuster story.

Roggio clearly indicates that the Iranians are heavily involved in what's going on inside Iraq, and that they're busy trying to shape the conflict to Iran's best interests. Those interests differ from that of the Iraqis, let alone the Americans.

At the same time, taking the NIE at face value makes little sense. In fact, it's downright dangerous, especially on how narrowly it defines the pursuit for nuclear weapons. Iran's currently actively engaging in nuclear enrichment and working on a plutonium processing plant, both of which are critical elements of a nuclear weapons program, but which are given short shrift in the NIE.

During the past year, a period when Iran’s weapons program was supposedly halted, the government has been busy installing some 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz. These machines could, if operated continuously for about a year, create enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a bomb. In addition, they have no plausible purpose in Iran’s civilian nuclear effort. All of Iran’s needs for enriched uranium for its energy programs are covered by a contract with Russia.

Iran is also building a heavy water reactor at its research center at Arak. This reactor is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran’s, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel. India, Israel and Pakistan have all built similar reactors — all with the purpose of fueling nuclear weapons. And why, by the way, does Iran even want a nuclear energy program, when it is sitting on an enormous pool of oil that is now skyrocketing in value? And why is Iran developing long-range Shahab missiles, which make no military sense without nuclear warheads to put on them?

For years these expensive projects have been viewed as evidence of Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons. Why aren’t they still? The answer is that the new report defines “nuclear weapons program” in a ludicrously narrow way: it confines it to to enriching uranium at secret sites or working on a nuclear weapon design. But the halting of its secret enrichment and weapon design efforts in 2003 proves only that Iran made a tactical move. It suspended work that, if discovered, would unambiguously reveal intent to build a weapon. It has continued other work, crucial to the ability to make a bomb, that it can pass off as having civilian applications.

That work includes the centrifuges at Natanz, which bring Iran closer to a nuclear weapon every day — two to seven years away. To assert, as the report does, that these centrifuges are “civilian,” and not part of Iran’s weapons threat, is grossly misleading.

And by grossly misleading, it means irresponsibly dangerous.

Yet, the media and opponents to the Bush Administration cling to the NIE with all the tenacity they can muster because they think that this will prevent the Administration from going further on dealing with the threat posed by Iran than sanctions, if the Administration can even generate any action on that front.