HOW CONVENIENT - AT 7:12 P.M. ET:  It's amazing how stories get floated at a time convenient to certain political forces.  President Obama has given Iran a deadline, more or less, of the end of September to reply to the president's "outreach," an offer to negotiate on Iran's nuclear program.  And what do you know?  We now have an "intelligence" assessment that basically says, "Hey, not to worry, plenty of time."  The State Department is saying that Iran won't be able to enrich weapons-grade uranium until 2013.  This differs from virtually every other professional assessment we've seen recently, but is certainly convenient in taking the heat off the Obama administration.  Washington Post:

Despite Iran's progress since 2007 toward producing enriched uranium, the State Department's intelligence analysts continue to think that Tehran will not be able to produce weapons-grade material before 2013, according to a newly disclosed congressional document.

The updated assessment, by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, emphasizes that the analysis is based on Iran's technical capability and is not a judgment about "when Iran might make any political decision" to produce highly enriched uranium.

The intelligence community agrees that a political decision has not yet been made. According to the assessment, State Department analysts think such a decision is unlikely to be made "for at least as long as international scrutiny and pressure persist."

COMMENT:  Obviously, we have no way to assess this judgment, but the timing is suspect.  It gives cover to the president.  And it seems out of whack even with the IAEA, hardly a tough-on-Iran body, whose assessments recently have been far more urgent.

We await responses to this, which will come in the form of leaks from European intelligence agencies, from the Israelis, and from other departments within the U.S. Government.

Just four days ago the London Times reported:

Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times.

The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.

Take your pick of intelligence reports.  Makes you confident, doesn't it?

August 7, 2009