Perhaps. But if Iran is not a threat, then Syria won’t attack us, either. Without Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah are powerless. And so the defense minister can retire.

Weapons development has cost Iran more than any potential sanctions. Iran does not have any enemies, and the impoverished country has no reason to spend its last rials for missiles unless it intends to put them to profitable use very soon, before they become obsolete.

Iran cannot carry out a war against Saudi Arabia or Egypt, both of which are supported by the United States. But Syria would find Iranian missiles handy against Israel. After losing Egypt as an anti-Israeli ally, Syria replaced it with Iran, and is now ready to restart hostilities.

After three months of enrichment, no Israeli attack will be able to eliminate Iran’s nuclear stocks.

Every sane person understands that sanctions are futile. Not only they are torpedoed by Russia and China, but even the strongest sanctions won’t break Iran’s back within the few months the ayatollahs need to finish their bomb.

Iran’s Russian S-300 SAM do not change the situation. In the current political climate, the Russians won’t man the batteries with their own personnel, and it would take Iranians months to learn to operate them reliably, if they ever do. Most importantly, the S-300 is too small to defend against a missile strike. Two S-300 will take out some 40 missiles, but Israel can launch about a thousand Tomahawk-type missiles.

The Russians will miss this deadline, too, but the important part is that they are cooperating with Iran despite their talk about sanctions.

Israel has not taken the hint from the Russian delays in launching the Bushehr: we have to bomb the place before it starts operating in order to prevent another Chernobyl in case of attack.

It is possible that Iran’s brazen defiance is rooted in its certainty that Israel won’t attack even under the best imaginable circumstances. Absent an attack now, Iran would reasonably feel safe in proceeding to enrich its uranium stocks to 80% and weaponize them.

But there is yet another possibility. As we suggested yesterday, Iran and Syria may be planning a preemptive strike on Israel; not a devastating strike, but sufficient to deter Israel from attacking Iran. In that case, Iran would expose its uranium stocks to provoke an Israeli attack against the compound—thickly defended with SAM batteries—and then counterstrike.

Decades ago, Israel conducted a similar operation with a Syrian passenger jet to obtain hostages for prisoner exchange, but since then has refrained from such spectacular interceptions.

It would be so easy to shoot down a plane carrying Ahmadinejad on one of his foreign trips.

The new sanctions, of course, will work no better than the previous sanctions, but Barak is up to something more important: averting an Israeli military operation against Iran.

The Iranian offer entails no risk for the West: it is unimaginable that the Iranians would steal the rods during the exchange without delivering the enriched stocks for exports. The exchange can take place at any embassy or on the border.

The West refused Iran’s offer because the deal is senseless by now. Iran has already attained 20% enrichment capacity, and can produce the fuel rods by itself. Iranian nuclear stockpiles are running at 2-2.5 tons, while the exchange earmarks only 1.2 tons for export. And the deal does not stop Iran from continuing enrichment.

Only the White House bars Israel from striking, though the joint operation plans with US Navy have already been refined.

If true, the attack would mark another touch of genius, following the one we saw in the Gaza war. Commando raids so deep into enemy territory, with such wide goals, have never been tried before, and it would astonishing if Israel could accomplish them.

Such an attack would further confirm the changing rules of warfare: just as conventional warfare has become unacceptably destructive, states follow the terrorists’ lead and turn to low-profile operations: assassinations, the CIA drone wars, and now Iran.

By now, an Israeli strike on Iran seems unavoidable. The government has accepted the possibility of Iran procuring nuclear weapons from North Korea, but assumes that ayatollahs with a couple of A-bombs won’t risk a confrontation with Israel, which has some 200 of them.

Meanwhile, the US has introduced a new set of sanctions against particular Iranian companies. The sanctions can easily be circumvented by using straw firms.

The reckless Vienna draft allowed Iran to have its cake and eat it, too: it mastered what is essentially weapons-grade uranium enrichment and demands fuel supply offered by the West in October last year.

Iranian research uranium produces plutonium.

Germany is strengthening its economic ties with Iran while accusing China of blocking the very sanctions which would block German-Iranian cooperation.

US General James Jones said that he is surprised by Iran’s “puzzling defiance” of the West. Far from puzzling, the Iranians are quite rational. They want the bomb and are sure that the West won’t stop them, just as it did not stop India, Pakistan, or North Korea.

C’mon, no way. Obama cannot even decide on bombing the North Korean and Iranian nuclear facilities, which pose a clear and present danger of nuclear terrorism, and we are to believe that he would wipe out Tehran or Pyongyang and the millions of people allegedly held hostage by their regimes? There would be a minute of silence in the UN, followed by a month of sanctions, and that’s it.

On the other hand, Israel would be perfectly safe to attack Iran’s underground laboratories with tactical nuclear weapons.

Obama’s move is merely a show intended to balance Ahmadinejad’s achievements. The Iranian leader has promised that by early February his country will start enriching uranium to 20%. The same technology would allow Iran to enrich its stocks to weapons-grade. Iran’s Weapons Group had already conducted successful experiments on implosive warheads, and 20% enrichment capability means that Iran is three months away from manufacturing the bomb.

There is little doubt that some of these tunnels are used to enrich Natanz uranium to weapons-grade.

Yeah, and next we’ll be paying unemployment benefits to the Poles who lost their lucrative jobs after Auschwitz was closed down.

The Iraqis probably got the idea from Iran, which has litigated against Israel for decades, demanding that we return the mammoth advances we received from Shah for weapons supplies.

Commercial matters between governments used to be arbitrated. In recent years, European courts have begun to disregard sovereign immunity and have issued orders against the property of foreign governments, notably Russia.

No sanctions can bring Iran to its knees in a matter of months. By the time the sanctions have any effect, Iran will possess the bomb and Obama will have to drop the sanctions to avoid further antagonizing a nuclear rogue state.

Meanwhile, as the latest sign of its peaceful intentions, Iran secretly purchased 1,350 of purified uranium ore in Kazakhstan, a country which prostitutes itself equally to Iran, Russia, and China.

Iran clearly does not want to abandon its uranium stocks, so it drags out the negotiations. That seems to suggest that Khamenei has given the go-ahead for producing the bomb, and that Iran only needs a month or two to complete it.

Sure, Ahmadinejad drags out the negotiations to gain time, but in one respect he is right: almost no country has ever given way to threats, and Iran certainly cannot give in to sanctions. Such a retreat would end Iran’s political credibility and ruin its regional hegemony. The sanctions have no chance to succeed.

Meanwhile, Iran’s political problems keep growing: tens of thousands of students and other pro-reform protesters clashed with Iranian police. To count on the reformers would be unwise, because Iranian politics is too entangled and could develop either way: the regime has successfully quelled student movements several times in past decades; the student protesters include both pro-American liberals and fierce Ahmadinejad-type nationalists who reject the ayatollahs but welcome the bomb; and Mousawi and Rafsanjani are staunchly pro-nuclear.

If Iran gets the bomb, the reformists will become dangerous: faced with imminent loss of power, the nuclear mullahs might go berserk, and would be liable to do anything, from passing the bomb to Syria or terrorists to bombing Israel.

New sanctions won’t even begin to take their toll on the Iranian economy before that country can produce nuclear weapons.

Iran has already responded by promising to build ten more enrichment sites and minimize its cooperation with the IAEA.

Portfolio investments remained legal even after California’s governor banned direct investment. The pension funds will have trouble selling their massive holdings in just four months, as Poizner told them to do. The investment ban makes little sense: companies from many other countries besides America invest in Iran, including Russia, France, Germany, India, South Korea, and China. Corporations line up to invest in Iran, made only more profitable by the sanctions, and California’s ban only injures domestic pension funds.

In four months, Iran may already have the bomb, and the sanctions will be useless.

For their part, the Russians again promised Iran to launch the Bushehr reactor soon. Well, if Russians have promised that the reactor will go hot by late 2009, 2019 would be an optimistic estimate.

Iran’s Ambassador to Russia announced that the KGB regime will deliver S-300 to the ayatollahs in a month or two.

Israel will have to strike before then.

Though contradictory statements from Iranian officials are common, this solution seem genuine because it addresses Iran’s fear of losing its nuclear stocks.

Iran, however, has not agreed to stop its uranium enrichment plant upon exporting the nuclear stocks, which is the point of the exchange deal. The stocks-for-rods exchange will make it politically difficult for Israel to attack Iran.

The Iranians are only rational: why should they give up their right to a nuclear bomb? Sanctions are silly: Iran would smuggle refined gasoline from UAE and Iraq, and receive LPG technology from private Russian companies.

The International crackdown on Iran’s nuclear program is pointless because the real trouble comes from North Korea, which continues to sell nuclear technology and stocks to cash bidders.

Iran’s IAEA rep, however, claimed today that Qom is a very important backup plant for the Iranian nuclear program. He used the example of Qom to say that the program is unstoppable, implying that there are other similar backup plants.

Looking at Netanyahu’s very long meeting with Obama and a recent string of hostile American actions toward Iran, Israel appears to be preparing for an attack on Iran. Sarkozy therefore was no doubt there to convey to Assad a warning from Netanyahu to keep out of the Israeli-Iranian conflict.

Assad’s one thousand mid-range Scud missiles, some of which are equipped with chemical and biological warheads, cannot inflict critical damage on Israel, and Assad will not use his rocket arsenal to provoke Israeli retaliation.

The Israeli Home Front Command has scheduled distribution of gas masks for January, but that might be a deception to lead Iran to believe that Israel won’t act before then.

Turkey, of course, would return the uranium to Iran at any time.

The term refers to thermonuclear or plutonium-core bombs. That again confirms our estimate that Iran needs the Bushehr and Tehran reactors mainly to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods.

But Iran does not need the rods: Russia fully supplies its Bushehr reactor, and consumption in Tehran’s medical reactor must be very small.

As we predicted, Iran is planning to reprocess uranium rods into weapons-grade uranium.

Instead of acquiescing to the West’s demands, Iran pressed its own—and so far appears to be winning.

Iran is torn between three excellent scenarios:

- spurn the reconciliation efforts, build the A-bomb, and then negotiate from a position of strength;
- export uranium now, receive aid, and gain time for technological development, and quickly build an A-bomb at an opportune moment;
- extract a lot of concessions from the West and other Middle Eastern countries by just demonstrating determination to build an A-bomb without actually constructing it.

We can only imagine the pressure exerted by Iran’s nuclear camp on Ayatollah Khamenei to approve the go-ahead. The decision is ultimately his.

America is the only power that could bring Israel, Iran, and the Arab League to the table. And there is a reason: Obama and Ahmadinejad share the dream of a nuclear-free world.

For Obama, merely having that goal has already gotten him the Nobel Peace Prize, and Ahmadinejad demands denuclearization as a way of saying that Iran won’t stop building the bomb until Israel dismantles her nuclear arsenal. Egypt also supports regional denuclearization as a way to disarm Israel.

Barak noted additionally that the agreement would allow Iran to continue operating centrifuges for low-level enrichment of uranium.

The US administration welcomed the agreement.

Israel had good reasons to be extremely dissatisfied with the Vienna draft.

The Egyptian moderation of Israeli-Iranian talks explains Egypt’s recent switch to a decidedly less bellicose position toward Iran.

The agreement does not obligate Iran to reveal its nuclear stocks, other than those enriched in Natanz. At least since 1991, Iran has imported tons of low-enriched uranium—and the latest large shipment arrived from North Korea this spring.

The agreement allows Iran to use Russian uranium rods at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center in Amirabad—something the ayatollahs have previously been denied. The small reactor produces plutonium. In conjunction with Russia, Iran enriches uranium in Amirabad by plasma method, a hugely expensive method whose only advantage is a small footprint, potentially allowing uranium enrichment in an apartment building.

If  Iran signs the agreement it will get foreign aid—and time to develop nuclear enrichment technologies.

But Iran can actually agree to the deal because it has a significant amount of uranium from North Korea, which is not accounted for by the IAEA estimates.

Iran can deliver its uranium to Russia for yet another reason. By now, it would take Iran only three months to produce one ton of low-enriched uranium, enough for processing into a nuclear bomb. By abandoning its uranium now, Iran can defuse the crisis, and like North Korea, jump-start its nuclear development at a slightly later date.

The terrorist act was apparently carried out by Mujahedeen Khalq, the Muslim socialists who initially aligned themselves with Khomeini but began to struggle against the ayatollahs after Khomeini refused them their share of government posts and budget allocations. The US and Britain support Mujahedeen Khalq.

Rafsanjani is ultra-corrupt and politically moderate, but he is the godfather of Iran’s nuclear program. Rafsanjani ran a nuclear research network that was secret even from Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa banning WMD. Rafsanjani pressed Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, to issue a fatwa circumventing Khomeini’s ban. Khamenei’s refusal to overrule the Imam is the only thing preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons immediately.

The ayatollahs have not decided yet to cross the Rubicon and make the bomb. They are concentrating on enriching as much uranium as possible and overcoming the technical difficulties in shaping a nuclear charge. North Korea’s nuclear bomb apparently failed because of its faulty design, and the Iranians have a lot of research in front of them.