Analysis // by Ben Frankel: U.S. still fighting for sanctions on Iran, but with a weaker hand

neighbor of Iran, Afghanistan, the mullahs thought it would be prudent to halt, temporarily, the work of a small design group whose work, in any event, had stepped too far ahead of progress made on the two other elements.

The strange, misleading, and poorly-timed NIE dealt a near-mortal blow to the administration’s own efforts to continue and intensify the economic sanctions on Iran. The administration thus contributed to the creation of a situation in which it is more likely than not that the world will either have to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or go to war to stop it. With its own inadvertent weakening of the case for economic sanctions (Iran, after all, had “halted” the work of a small element of its nuclear weapon program), this middle option of imposing penalties short of war on Iran is becoming less feasible by the day.

The administration bravely soldiers on, though, as we learn that the United States has recently shared new intelligence with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program that Washington says shows Tehran was directly engaged in trying to make a bomb, diplomats said Thursday. One of the diplomats said Washington also gave the IAEA permission to confront Iran with at least some of the evidence in an attempt to pry details out of the Islamic republic, as part of the UN nuclear watchdog’s attempts to investigate Iran’s suspicious nuclear past. The diplomats suggested that such moves by the U.S. administration would be a reflection of Washington’s’ drive to pressure Iran into acknowledging that it had focused part of its nuclear efforts toward developing a weapons program.

AP reports that the United States is leading the push for a third set of U.N. sanctions against Iran. Tehran insists its program is intended only to produce energy and has refused UN demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment program —technology that can produce both fuel for nuclear reactors and the fissile material for a bomb. As we said above, the recent U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran had a clandestine weapons program but stopped working on it four years ago has hurt Washington’s attempts to have the UN Security Council impose a third set of sanctions. The United States has previously declassified and then forwarded intelligence to the IAEA to help its investigations, but it does so on a selective basis.

Following Israel’s bombing of a Syrian site on 6 September last year, and media reports citing unidentified U.S. officials as saying the target was a nuclear installation, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei turned in vain to the United States in asking for details on what was struck, said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for divulging confidential information. Over the past two years, the United States already has shared material on a laptop computer reportedly smuggled out of Iran. In 2005 U.S. intelligence assessed that information as indicating that Tehran had been working on details of nuclear weapons, including missile trajectories and ideal altitudes for exploding warheads. After declassification, U.S. intelligence also was forwarded on two other issues: The “Green Salt Project” — a plan the United States alleges links diverse components of a nuclear weapons program, including uranium enrichment, high explosives testing, and a missile re-entry vehicle — and material in Iran’s possession showing how to mold uranium metal into warhead form. Two of the diplomats tol AP that the material forwarded to the IAEA over the past two weeks expanded on the previous information from the Americans, but had no additional details.

Iran is already under two sets of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, which it started developing during nearly two decades of covert nuclear activity built on illicit purchases and revealed only five years ago. Since then, IAEA experts have uncovered activities, experiments, and blueprints and materials that point to possible efforts by Iran to create nuclear weapons, even though Tehran insists its nuclear project is peaceful and aimed only at creating a large-scale enrichment facility to make reactor fuel. Its leaders consistently dismiss allegations that they are interested in enrichment for its other use — creating fissile material suitable for arming warheads. Instead of heeding Security Council demands to freeze enrichment, Iran has expanded its program. On Wednesday diplomats told AP that Iran’s new generation of advanced centrifuges have begun processing small quantities of the gas that can be used to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.