THE BRITS WERE RIGHT – AT 8:06 A.M. ET:  Recently we were treated to smiling predictions that the successful cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program had set the country back three years.  There were high-fives all around.  But Britain's great defense minister, Liam Fox, one of the few gems left in Western governments, cautioned that he didn't think so.  Dr. Fox, a physician by training, was right.  Surveillance cameras installed by international inspectors told the story.  From WaPo:

In a six-month period between late 2009 and last spring, U.N. officials watched in amazement as Iran dismantled more than 10 percent of the Natanz plant's 9,000 centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium. Then, just as remarkably, hundreds of new machines arrived at the plant to replace the ones that were lost.

The story told by the video footage is a shorthand recounting of the most significant cyberattack to date on a nuclear installation. Records of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, show Iran struggling to cope with a major equipment failure just at the time its main uranium enrichment plant was under attack by a computer worm known as Stuxnet, according to Europe-based diplomats familiar with the records.

But the IAEA's files also show a feverish - and apparently successful - effort by Iranian scientists to contain the damage and replace broken parts, even while constrained by international sanctions banning Iran from purchasing nuclear equipment. An IAEA report due for release this month is expected to show steady or even slightly elevated production rates at the Natanz enrichment plant over the past year.

The Stuxnet attack was brilliant.  But how effective was it, bottom line?

A draft report by Washington-based nuclear experts concludes that the net impact was relatively minor.

Now, once again, experts are warning that the Iranians may well be within a year or so of a nuclear weapon.  This comes at a time when the Iranian regime is beating down protesters and even threatening them with execution.

We will, of course, be smugly told that all this doesn't matter, that Iran doesn't have the means to deliver an atomic bomb by plane or missile.  Nonsense.  No such capability is needed.  A nuclear device in the hold of a cargo ship, protected by a suicide crew, can take out the port of Baltimore, New York, or San Diego. 

Problem not solved.

February 16, 2011