"WHO LEAKED THIS? - AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  From The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration and its European allies are setting a target of early October to determine whether engagement with Iran is making progress or should lead to sanctions, said senior officials briefed on the policy.

They also are developing specific benchmarks to gauge Iranian behavior. Those include whether Tehran is willing to let United Nations monitors make snap inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities that are now off-limits, and whether it will agree to a "freeze for freeze" -- halting uranium enrichment in return for holding off on new economic sanctions -- as a precursor to formal negotiations.

The moves are partly driven by concerns in Israel and among Washington's Arab allies that Tehran could drag out negotiations indefinitely while advancing its nuclear program, the officials said.

COMMENT:  The Israeli and Arab concerns are entirely justified, and the strategy makes some sense, although I would have hoped for a date earlier than October.  However, leaking this information to the press is problematical, as it gives a road map to the Iranians.  Now they know what they must do, or appear to do, to keep negotiations going and not compromise their nuclear program.

By the way, IranPressNews reports the following, in an AFP dispatch:

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Iran is very close to acquiring nuclear weapons, the head of Israel's military intelligence was reported as telling a powerful parliamentary committee on Tuesday. "Iran is at the moment very close to getting a military nuclear arsenal," Amos Yadlin told parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee, adding that "Iran can manage to stabilise its military nuclear programme by 2010."

"The Iranian strategy was not to get the international community against it, but to discreetly continue nuclear armament without crossing red lines," he was quoted by Israeli media as saying.

This is not going well for Washington.  We should try to accelerate the negotiations process, which will not work to our advantage, and move to something much stronger, if the Obama administration has the guts.

May 14, 2009