Iran's "Good News" may be DUD

KUWAIT CITY—Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the front pages of the Kuwait-based Arab Times, and almost every other paper in world, today by promising nuclear “good news” tomorrow.

Does any one think this will be good news for the rest of us? It is telling that the Arab press appears to be as worried about an Iranian atom bomb as Israeli media. (European and American media seem curiously ambivalent, perhaps because they believe the bomb is years away and that they are out of missile range anyway.Like Teddy bears, they are clutching false hopes than cannot really protect them.)

But, actually, it might be good news.

Iran has made dramatic announcements before—that have not panned out. Consider this CNN report from Nov. 14:

“We will commission some 3,000 centrifuges by this year end. We are determined to master fuel cycle, and commission some 60,000 centrifuges to meet our demands,” the president said at a news conference closed to foreign reporters.

“Today the Iranian nation possesses the full nuclear fuel cycle and time is completely running in our favor in terms of diplomacy.”

Ahmadinejad said Iran hopes to celebrate its nuclear success during the “Ten-Day Dawn” festivities at the beginning of February, which mark the country’s victory in the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Of course, Iran had not achieved its goal by February 2007. American intelligence officials that I have spoke with do not believe that Iran has actually mastered the fuel cycle (i.e. can make their own nuclear fuel in sufficient quantities to breed more fuel). And if Iran had met their self-imposed deadline, they would have let the world know.

Maybe its April 9 announcement—the “good news”—is simply that it finally met its February goals.

Clearly, there are two Iranian nuclear programs. One is the actual program that we know little about. We know little because, even though Iran signed U.N. treaties to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency (the Vienna-based IAEA) and even signed a special annex agreeing to spot inspections by that agency, the Islamic Republic has not complied with international law.

Indeed, Iran sees international law as something to either keep the west impotently busy or to be boldly defied. Remember Ahmadinejad said: “…time is completely running in our favor in terms of diplomacy.”

The other nuclear program is the one that Ahmadinejad talks about. It is one that moves briskly and relentlessly toward deadlines and total success.

So what is the relationship between the two nuclear programs, the real one and the one Ahmadinejad describes? That is a matter of intense debate in intelligence circles, but let’s make some reasonable inferences.

The Iranian leader could well be bluffing or “talking big” as Saddam Hussein did in the early 1970s when he announced that he had atomic weapons and again in the late 1970s, when he said he was very close. (For a good history of Saddam’s 1970s WMD programs, read Schmuel Bar.) Few doubted Saddam’s intentions, which is why the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981. Saddam later learned to be more subtle in his WMD boasts in the 1990s.

This does not mean that we should ignore or minimize the threat of an Iranian bomb, or the past threat of an Iraqi one. “Fake it until you make it,” seems to be the motto in the Middle East, from pimping out your Mercedes while your family leaves in squalor to building big weapons while your nation begs for electricity and clean water.

Second, elements of the intelligence community have long suspected that Iran’s scientists are struggling to meet the increasingly ambitious demands of its rulers. The program has missed announced deadlines before. And, if the “good news” is that Iran has now met the targets it hoped to meet in early February, then tomorrow’s announcement would confirm that trend.

Why are Iran’s scientists having trouble? Again, we can only speculate.

Certainly the timetable might be unrealistic. These things take time. Any technician knows that when management does not understand a technology, its expectations tend to be like a Borges story—real-sounding, but not realistic.

And let’s not underestimate how hard it is to build a bomb or even make the nuclear fuel for one. The idea that you can build an atom bomb in your garage assumes that you live in a place with a highly advanced industrial structure that can deliver precision equipment, purified materials and so on. And if Iran had that, it would also have clean water and 24-7 electricity in every village. Iraq did not succeed in more than three decades of trying. But Iran has crucial advantages that Iraq did not have: the help of the Russians, the Chinese and Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan.

It is also possible that some scientists and engineers in the program actually do not want the mullahs to succeed. The Nazi nuclear program included a number of specialists, perhaps including program head and legendary atomic scientist Niels Bohr, who seemed to be slow-walking their work to keep Hitler from getting the bomb. (Of course these specialists were helped indirectly by allied bombings raids and bold acts of sabotage by Norwegian resistance and British special forces—factors missing in this equation.)

Whatever the cause, any sign that Iran’s nuclear program is hitting speed bumps is good news for us. For now.

Will use the time to take effective action?