At worst, the P5+1 diplomats will actually be aware of the true nature of the Iranian regime, but will act out the script of “negotiating constructively” with it so as to further certain ancillary goals—like lowering oil prices, boosting political fortunes, and above all, forestalling a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

This constructive, reasonable Iran, ready to strike a deal and essentially having the same aims as the P5+1 countries except for a few bridgeable areas of disagreement, cannot be the same Iran that just this week called for the “full annihilation of Israel,” that has taken a steady toll of American lives in Iraq, that bragged earlier this month of its navy’s ability to threaten New York City, that has been responsible for an ongoing string of terrorist atrocities for over three decades, and that continues to intimidate its Persian Gulf neighbors with subversion and very real threats of conquest.

There is, indeed, a situation in which a regime like Iran’s would sue for reasonable terms and real compromise—if it were truly on the ropes. But, while the sanctions are taking an economic toll, not even the most determined optimists claim that Tehran is anywhere near teetering. Not while its nuclear program continues at full speed, and while, as Israeli analyst Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael Segall notes, it has been continuing a policy of strategic “buildup, defiance, and power projection” in the face of all Western blandishments.

IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano’s claim on Tuesday, then, about an imminent—but still-unsigned—deal with Iran allowing inspection of some of its nuclear sites was a kind of ominous prelude to the Baghdad talks. It was the IAEA whose report last November—confirming all of Israel’s warnings about Iran’s unceasing progress toward the bomb—seemed to create a more serious atmosphere regarding the threat. It was Amano himself who heightened the sense of crisis in March by warning that Iran had tripled production of higher-grade enriched uranium.

The timing of this paltry “agreement” announced by the IAEA suggests that the Iranians are once again rope-a-doping the U.N. and the West, playing for time by exploiting both Obama’s fear of an Israeli attack before the elections, and the Europeans’ usual preference for using diplomatic words to avoid military deeds. Thus this latest “breakthrough” is nothing more than another Iranian tactic in its long-term strategy for acquiring nuclear weapons. As Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak responded to the announcement, “The Iranians appear to be trying to reach a technical deal that will create an appearance as if there is progress in the talks to remove some of the pressure ahead of the talks in Baghdad and to postpone an escalation in sanctions.” Indeed, using the talks to ease sanctions is clearly what the Iranians are up to. Parliament Chairman Ali Larijani ordered the West to “stop the shell game they have played on Iran,” since it would be “improper” for the P5+1 powers to negotiate while imposing tighter sanctions. The implication is that relaxing sanctions is a precondition for any agreement.

But even if the Iranians sign the deal with the IAEA, and even if some more definitive agreement is reached in Baghdad, the problem of a nuclear Iran will not be solved, but merely delayed. The history of North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons suggests the playbook Iran is following. In 1994, North Korea signed an agreement that called for the North to shut down its plutonium-based Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for help in building two nuclear reactors for producing electricity. Eight years later, the Koreans admitted to a U.S. delegation that all along it had been enriching uranium. The next year, the North withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and began the “six-nation” negotiations over its nuclear program. That gabfest masked the ongoing development of nuclear weapons, which Korea announced it possessed a year later. Subsequent years saw more promises of cooperation and action by the Koreans when food-aid or other economic help was needed, followed by further provocations and threats, followed in turn by more Western concessions, starting the cycle all over again. Meanwhile the North has continued testing and developing missiles, threatening its neighbors, and providing rogue regimes like Iran and Syria with nuclear technology and know-how.

Given the success of the North Koreans, the Iranians are following the same strategy for becoming a nuclear power, combining diplomatic engagement, threatening bluster, meaningless “agreements,” and duplicitous evasion in order to keep the West off balance. Thus it’s no coincidence that on the same day talks begin in Baghdad the Iranians are launching a satellite on a missile that could be adapted for delivering a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile as the diplomatic dance proceeds, the centrifuges are spinning and nuclear facilities are being buried deep underground, activities that will continue until it’s too late or too costly for the West to do anything about Iran’s nukes.

The Parchin complex came into focus when the Associated Press (AP) publicized a drawing from a country keeping track of Iran’s nuclear program. It depicted a containment chamber that is used to test multipoint explosives of the type used to set off a nuclear charge. The official who shared the computer-generated drawing with AP says it is based on information from an informant inside the Parchin complex, and that going into further detail would endanger the informant’s life. The official also demanded that he and his country remain anonymous in exchange for sharing secret intelligence information.

Olli Heinonen, the former senior official in charge of the Iran file prior to his departure from the IAEA last year, says the drawing is “very similar” to a photo he has seen and identifies as that of the Iranian chamber. He further noted that even the colors of the two images match. His contention was buttressed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack, who said intelligence agencies are familiar with the drawing as well.

This follows two earlier references to the structure. The first was a November 8 report by the IAEA describing “a large explosives containment vessel” for experiments on triggering a nuclear explosion, one for which they had satellite images “consistent with this information.” The second was from IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who said his agency had “credible information that indicates that Iran engaged in activities relevant to the development of nuclear explosive devices” at the site.

Turkey’s foreign minister came to Washington on Friday, trying to push another fake “peace in our time” deal with Iran. Given the Obama administration’s track record with Iran to date, they may take it – with disastrous consequences.

Ahmed Davotoglu hectored members of Congress and activists who have been pushing for tough measures on the Iranian regime, arguing that a spoonful of sugar was all that was needed to get Iran to “cut a deal on limits to its nuclear program.”

“The deal is clear. It could be resolved in a few days,” Davotoglu said. The problem was “mutual distrust,” made worse by U.S. sanctions. “What happened [as a result of sanctions]? Iran produced more” enriched uranium, he argued.

We have heard this siren song many times before. In 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency woke up to the fact that Iran had been lying to IAEA inspectors for the previous 18 years about its secret nuclear weapons-related program, the same advocates of talks with Tehran argued that everything could be resolved “in a few days.”

Then IAEA secretary general, the Egyptian Mohamed Elbaradei, flew to Tehran in February 2003 to meet with Iran’s then “moderate” president, mullah Mohammad Khatami. Instead of a few days, talks dragged on for two years, during which time the Iranian regime completed construction on key facilities needed for its weapons program.

Are our memories so short that we have forgotten this charade? Iran’s top nuclear negotiator was criticized by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the 2005 presidential elections in Iran for having “gone soft” and “caving in to imperialist powers” by signing an agreement with the IAEA that theoretically opened Iran’s nuclear facilities to inspections.

But Ahmadinejad hadn’t read the memo – at least, not yet. The former negotiator, Hossein Musavian, revealed the truth in a television interview that should have put a halt to any future attempts to negotiate with Tehran.

”Thanks to our dealings with Europe, even when we got a 50-day ultimatum, we managed to continue the work for two years,” Musavian said of the 2003 deal that was eventually struck. “Today, we are in a position of power.” The negotiations with Europe and the IAEA had been a ploy to “buy time” so Iran could complete work on its enrichment facilities, he added.

Every time the U.S. or the Europeans or the P5+1 (the permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) engage in “negotiations” with Tehran, the Iranian regime feigns to make concessions, then enriches away.

That is precisely what is going on today. Except that today, Iran is so close to the bomb that the slightest mistake will be deadly.

Thanks to the IAEA inspections, we now know that the Islamic Republic has enough enriched uranium to make four nuclear warheads. Much of this uranium has been enriched to twenty percent. Once uranium is enriched to 20%, Iran can complete the process to reach weapons-grade fuel in just a few weeks. That means Iran can “break out” of any agreement and make the fuel for nuclear weapons between two inspection visits by the IAEA, making it extremely difficult to detect – until too late.

We also know that Iran has developed a nuclear warhead with aid from Pakistani nuclear black market genius, A.Q. Khan, and has extensively tested all of its non-nuclear components to validate the design.

In November, thanks to a mysterious explosion at a missile research center outside of Iran, we learned that Iran has been working hard to develop a new ICBM with a range of 10,000 miles. While the design parameters of that missile are not well known, it is clear that the Iranian regime is developing this missile in order to target the United States.

The man who designed that new missile, who was killed in the blast, left behind instructions that the epitaph on his tomb should read: “Write on my tombstone: This is the grave of the one who wanted to annihilate Israel.”

Now we can all rest assured. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has “stumbled badly” and is “beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes,” the Washington Post proclaimed on Tuesday.

An alleged joint U.S.-Israeli cyber attack known as Stuxnet and other problems have taken “a mounting toll” on Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program that could “hurt Iran’s ability to break out quickly” into the ranks of the world’s nuclear powers,” the Post concluded.

In other words, it’s “peace in our time” when it comes to Iran. Obama’s policy of pressure and incentives (the old “carrots and sticks” approach) is working. We can all go home, pop open a good bottle, and relax.

In case you were wondering about his “administration” sources, the author of this good news story, Joby Warrick, jetted off to Libya with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as his story appeared on the front page of Post’s printed edition on Tuesday. Pravda has spoken.

To give his fairy tale the “audacity of hope,” Warrick cited two just-released reports by David Albright, who briefly worked as an on-site inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Citing fragmentary evidence gathered by IAEA inspectors in Iran, Albright extrapolated graphs for the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) at Iran’s primary enrichment plant at Natanz, which many analysts believe was hit by the Stuxnet virus in the fall of 2009.

While overall production of LEU appeared to have remained stable, there appears to have been an abrupt drop over the summer. Albright attributes this to problems Iran is having with acquiring centrifuge production materials, and to the lingering impact of Stuxnet. “Without question, they have been set back,” he told the Post.

But at the same time, the IAEA data shows that Iran has actually increased significantly the number of centrifuges that are actively spinning. So if their setbacks are temporary, they quite feasibly could dramatically increase their production in the very near future. That is just the opposite of what the Washington Post wants you to believe.

Albright has a history of downplaying the progress of Iran’s nuclear program, and tried to get Rep. Sylvester Reyes (D, Tx) to call back a report by the Republican staff of the House intelligence committee in 2007 once he took over as committee chairman.

The report warned that the IAEA and the U.S. intelligence community were downplaying the seriousness of Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts, in particular, its successful procurement of centrifuge gear from Pakistani nuclear weapons guru A. Q. Khan, as I described on this website at the time.

The HPSCI report criticized then IAEA Secretary General Mohamad ElBaradei for firing chief inspector Christophe Charlier, a U.S. nuclear weapons expert, for raising concerns about Iranian deception. Albright defended ElBaradei for firing the Charlier and called on HPSCI to recall the report.

In a parallel report, released on Monday, Albright claimed that Iran appears to have abandoned using imported maraging steel to make the bellows of its new, more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuge design. Instead, they are using carbon fiber, a material Iran claims to be manufacturing locally.

There are several possible explanations for the shift. Albright says the most likely is that U.S. and international “sanctions may have forced Iran into choosing a less desirable technical centrifuge design.”

In fact, according to design information Iran provided the IAEA, Iran always intended to use carbon fiber for the bellows and rotors of its newer, more efficient IR-2 centrifuges, and is not resorting to a cheap substitute because of sanctions.

A fellow left-leaning analyst writing the “arms control wonk” website pointed out four years ago that Iran’s IR-2 (also known as P-2) centrifuges would be using carbon fiber, not maraging steel.

Despite this evidence, Albright concluded, “Constraints on Iran’s advanced centrifuge program have resulted directly from the effectiveness of targeted sanctions against critical goods necessary for the manufacture of centrifuge components.” That certainly warranted a front-page story in Tuesday’s Washington Post, since it gave the key to the “Peace in Our Time” theme that ran throughout.

But Warrick went even further by tying the apparent (and I believe, unsubstantiated) setbacks in Iran’s nuclear programs to the apparent stumble-bunnie plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC.

‘“We’re used to seeing them do bad things, but this plot was so bizarre, it could be a sign of desperation, a reflection of the fact that they’re feeling under siege,” said [an Obama administration] official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could discuss the matter candidly,” Warrick reported.

In other words, this attempted act of terror was not an act of war; it was the act of a desperate man that can be safely ignored.

To further enhance the impression that we have nothing to worry about, Warrick then hauled out a real whopper:

“U.S. officials have said that the alleged assassination plot originated from elements within Iran’s elite Quds Force, a covert paramilitary group. But it is not clear whether the nation’s top leaders knew about or approved the plan,” he wrote (emphasis mine).

Now the indictment states clearly that Gen. Qassem Suleymani, the head of the Quds Force, approved the plot. The Quds Force is the overseas expeditionary wing of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, the IRGC, and takes its orders directly from Supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Gen. Suleymani is a close confidant of Khamenei. What more “top” leader could possible have approved such a plot?

The Obama White House believes that Khamenei feels trapped, and they are trying to give him some wiggle room. They argue that he is fighting for his political life against Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani, both of whom would like to unseat him, and that he doesn’t have a direct line to Washington so he can arrange a Kumbaya moment with our president.

So what we are getting is excuses for the Iranian regime’s murderous impulses. Next perhaps will be, “the devil made him do it.”

The IAEA has already told us that Iran has cold-tested the components of a workable nuclear weapons design. Forget this nonsense about some illusory “setback” to their program. All clandestine nuclear weapons programs, including our own in the 1940s, have had their setbacks. Our biggest worry should be the upcoming nuclear weapons test Iran is planning to conduct with North Korea, especially if they focus on a smaller yield but potent EMP warhead.

Peace in our time? Sure, we’ve seen that film before, and we ought to know how it ends.

Stay tuned.

Israel praised an International Atomic Energy Agency report released on Thursday that says Iran may be developing a nuclear warhead.

"The new IAEA report deals more sharply and clearly than its predecessors with the military aspects of Iran's nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Friday.

Noting that the report is the first during the term of new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano of Japan, Israel said it "establishes that the agency has a lot of trustworthy information about the past and present activities that testify to the military tendencies of the Iranian program."

Among these activities were the recently declared decisions to enrich uranium to 20 percent and the continued construction of the Qom nuclear facility, kept secret until it was discovered by Western intelligence agencies and made public in recent months.

The UN nuclear agency report suggested for the first time that Teheran had either resumed such work or had never stopped when US intelligence thought it did....

Yet the Fantasy-Based Policymaking continues.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog fears Iran may be working now to develop a nuclear-armed missile, the agency said on Thursday, throwing independent weight behind Western suspicions of an active Iranian weapons program.

In unusually blunt language surfacing under new chief Yukiya Amano, an International Atomic Energy Agency report for the first time suggested Iran was actively chasing nuclear weapons capability rather than merely having done so in the past.

The IAEA seemed to be cautiously going public with suspicions arising from a classified agency analysis leaked in part last year which concluded that Iran has already honed explosives expertise relevant to a workable nuclear weapon.

The report also confirmed Iran had produced its first, small batch of uranium enriched to a higher purity -- 20 percent.

Both developments will intensify pressure on Iran to prove it is not covertly bent on "weaponising" enrichment by allowing unfettered access for IAEA inspectors and investigators, something it rejects in protest at U.N. sanctions.

The United States is already leading a push for the U.N. Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran because of suspicions that it may be developing nuclear weapons, and has received declarations of support from Russia, which has until now been reluctant to expand sanctions.

Tehran says its nuclear program is meant only to yield electricity or radio-isotopes for agriculture or medicine. It took a diametrically opposing view of the report's conclusions.

"The IAEA's new report confirmed Iran's peaceful nuclear activities and the country's non-deviation toward military purposes," Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told the state news agency IRNA.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States did not understand why Iran had refused to "come to the table and engage constructively" over its nuclear program, adding: "You have to draw some conclusions from that." [...]

IAEA's new chief, Yukiya Amano, is seen as more inclined to confront Iran than his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei, who retired on December 1.

"Now we see from (available intelligence) that certain activities may have continued after 2004," said a senior official close to the IAEA. "We want to find out from Iran what they've had to do with these nuclear explosive-related activities."

The U.S. director of National Intelligence concluded last year that Iran would not be technically able to devise a nuclear weapon before 2013. But a new intelligence estimate is due soon....

It's 2010 now, and Operation "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!" continues. "Iran rejects heart of nuclear proposal," by George Jahn for the Associated Press, January 19:

VIENNA - Iran has told the head of the U.N. nuclear agency that it does not accept an international proposal committing it to quickly export most of the material it would need to make a nuclear warhead, diplomats said Tuesday.

For months, Iranian officials have used the media to criticize the plan backed by most of the world's major powers and to offer alternatives to one of its main conditions -- that the Islamic republic ship out most of its stock of enriched uranium and then wait for up to a year for its return in the form of fuel rods for its Tehran research reactor.

While critical of such statements, the United States and its allies noted that Iran had yet to respond to the International Atomic Agency regarding the plan, first drawn up in early October in a landmark meeting in Geneva between Iran and the six world powers, and then refined later that month in Vienna talks among Iran, the U.S., Russia and France.

But Iran now also has told the IAEA -- which chaired the Vienna talks -- that it wants an alternative to the plan. Its version effectively rejects the key demand that it agree to a tight timetable in shipping out most of its enriched uranium supply, said the diplomats.

The talks in Vienna came up with a draft proposal that would take 70 percent of Iran's low-enriched uranium to reduce its stockpile of material that could be enriched to a higher level, and possibly be used to make nuclear weapons.

That uranium would be returned about a year later as refined fuel rods, which can power reactors but cannot be readily turned into weapons-grade material. Iran maintains its nuclear program is only for the peaceful purpose of generating energy.

The Geneva talks grouped the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany around the negotiating table with Iran. Diplomats from three of those big powers said Tuesday that Iran's counterproposal to the IAEA was essentially a rehash of an already publicly floated offer that fell far short of the six nations' expectations....

But hey, it bought them more time.

The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites.

“This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.”

The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September.

Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty.

According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five.

It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.”

The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists.

“As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said.

But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran.

Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms.

Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million.

Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors.

The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t.

Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride.

But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility.

The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.

Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis

October 5, 2009 | 2015 GMT

By George Friedman

The Iranian Nuclear Game

Two major leaks occurred this weekend over the Iran matter.

In the first, The New York Times published an article reporting that staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear oversight group, had produced an unreleased report saying that Iran was much more advanced in its nuclear program than the IAEA had thought previously. According to the report, Iran now has all the data needed to design a nuclear weapon. The New York Times article added that U.S. intelligence was re-examining the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007, which had stated that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

The second leak occurred in the British daily The Times, which reported that the purpose of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly publicized secret visit to Moscow on Sept. 7 was to provide the Russians with a list of Russian scientists and engineers working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The second revelation was directly tied to the first. There were many, including STRATFOR, who felt that Iran did not have the non-nuclear disciplines needed for rapid progress toward a nuclear device. Putting the two pieces together, the presence of Russian personnel in Iran would mean that the Iranians had obtained the needed expertise from the Russians. It would also mean that the Russians were not merely a factor in whether there would be effective sanctions but also in whether and when the Iranians would obtain a nuclear weapon.

via Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis | STRATFOR.