IRANIAN INTRIGUE – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  Con Coughlin, of London's Telegrah, reports on a series of mysterious explosions inside Iran:

In the past few weeks Iran’s gas infrastructure, which is central to the country’s energy requirements, has been hit by a series of unexplained explosions.

The series of mysterious explosions began at the end of July when the state-owned Tehran Times reported that a pipeline carrying gas from Iran to Turkey had exploded near the eastern Turkish town of Dogubayazit. Iranian officials blamed the blast on Kurdish rebels.

Or, they blame faulty maintenance.

But the high number of attacks on Iran’s gas pipelines within the space of less than a month will inevitably raised suspicions that this is the work of professional saboteurs. The CIA, for example, is known to have a clandestine operation underway to destabilise the Iranian regime. Certainly the prospect of facing the next winter without adequate fuel supplies would not go down well in a country which has still not come to terms with last year’s rigged presidential election contest.

I certainly hope that the U.S. or its allies are involved in this, and in a lot more. 

Meanwhile, Washington believes the Iranian nuclear program has run into trouble.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.

The problem is, we seem more concerned about preventing Israeli military action than in preventing an Iranian bomb.  And, beyond sanctions, there does not seem to be a Plan B. 

If the U.S. is correct in its intelligence assessment, that would place achievement of an Iranian nuclear weapon right in the middle of our 2012 presidential election campaign.  It could prove a critical issue, a point of sharp division between the accommodating Obama and a more realistic challenger. 

August 20, 2010