Iran takes a step forward on enrichment

The IAEA may be bureaucratic and slow, but the facts they assert are generally borne out, so, when they say Iran is on the verge of capability for large scale enrichment, I think we should take that as fact.

They still have not crossed over some of the hurdles, but this would mark a substantial step forward. Right now they're enriching to 5%, not the 90% for weapons grade material. They would need to "throw out the inspectors" to do weapons grade enrichment.

Perhaps as troubling in this article is the revelation that the Iranians are working off bomb design plans probably provided by Pakistani Abdul Kadeer Khan.

The policy positions are outlined, to bomb or not to bomb.....

Some Bush administration officials and some nuclear experts here at the I.A.E.A. and elsewhere suspect that the Iranians may not be driving for a weapon but the ability to have sufficient stockpiles of low-enriched uranium that they could produce a bomb within months of evicting inspectors, as North Korea did in 2003. That capacity alone could serve as a nuclear deterrent.

One senior European diplomat, who declined to speak for attribution, said that Washington would now have to confront the question of whether it wants to keep Iran from producing any nuclear material, or whether it wants to keep it from gaining the ability to build a weapon on short notice.....

But hawks in the administration say that the only position President Bush can take now, without appearing to back down, is to stick to the administration’s past argument that “not one centrifuge spins” in Iran. They argue for escalating sanctions and the threat that, if diplomacy fails, the United States could destroy the nuclear facilities.

And that policy of threat has worked so well so far....

(Also, Bush meets with hawkish "Christian" leaders and gets James Dobson to talk hostility towards Iran.

Funny how this radio message to the "faithful" just happens to come out coincident with the Iranian enrichment news........)