It’s been building for a decade. President George W. Bush warned that “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.” President Barack Obama has expressed worries about “the continuing threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.” In 2009, a high-level U.S. intelligence official concluded that Iran could have a nuclear bomb in 2011. And now, that moment—the one so many dreaded and predicted and feared—appears to be at hand. Specifically, the latest IAEA report expresses “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” concludes that Iran “has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device,” declares that there are “strong indicators of possible weapon development” and details a number of examples of overt and illegal efforts at weaponization, including: nuclear-bomb modeling, developing trigger devices and studying ways to fit nuclear payloads onto the Shahab-3 missile. As the Washington Post puts it, the IAEA has concluded that “Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon.”

This helps explain the rush of diplomatic and military activity swirling around the Middle East.

In diplomatic circles, the IAEA report has been called “a game changer” by British officials.

In Israel, recent weeks have seen a flurry of very-public, very-choreographed signals: long-range missile tests; air maneuvers in Italy featuring what one Israeli newspaper describes as “lengthy, long-distance mission exercises”; and streams of worrisome words.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that “A nuclear Iran will be a dire threat to the Middle East and the entire world and…a direct and grave threat to us.”

There are suggestions by Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Israel has plans to strike Iran with or without U.S. support. It’s worth noting that Israel has taken unilateral preemptive action in self-defense many times: the 1967 war was a preemptive war; the strike on Iraq’s nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981 was preemptive; the bombing raids on Syria’s nascent nuclear plant in 2007 were preemptive; and the mysterious Stuxnet cyber-attacks, purportedly carried out by a quiet coalition of American, Israeli and European intelligence agencies, were preemptive.

There are reports that Barak and Netanyahu are trying to win over a majority of the cabinet for a counter-proliferation strike. Barak has even discussed casualty figures, suggesting detailed war-gaming on Israel’s part.

President Shimon Peres speaks of a “ticking clock…there is not much time left.” The elder statesman says “Iran is nearing atomic weapons…What needs to be done must be done and there is a long list of options.”

Most of the options are military. The Guardian newspaper reports that “Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran.” Not known for hyperbole or military cheerleading, the left-leaning paper cites military sources who say the U.S. and U.K. are planning “targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities.” Information leaked to the Guardian sketches the outlines of a series of counter-proliferation strikes “predominantly waged from the air, with some naval involvement, using missiles such as the Tomahawks [and] a small number of special forces.”

The Arab world, too, seems genuinely concerned about Iran.

Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem correspondent for Britain’s Telegraph, reports that “Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” and that Obama “was rebuffed last month when he demanded” such a guarantee.

Blomfield says he has this dope from “insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America’s most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s hawkish prime minister….” He’s referring to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Israel last month, during which, in a “private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak,” Panetta conveyed Obama’s “urgent” demand. Yet

the two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States….

Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu’s noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions.

The report meshes with Panetta’s not-so-veiled warning to Israel just before that visit to lay off Iran, and with his statement this week—albeit not explicitly directed at Israel—that an attack on Iran could have “unintended consequences…. It could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on US forces in the region.”

The same message came through from Europe this week. French foreign minister Alain Juppe said an attack on Iranian’s nuclear facilities would “drag the world into an ‘uncontrollable spiral.’” In the wake of last week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear progress—confirming all of Israel’s warnings over the years—EU foreign ministers “ruled out any military action for now.”

Juppe did say the EU would be “asking the European Investment Bank to freeze loans to Iran.” Meanwhile the EU foreign ministers “decided to wait till their next meeting on Dec 1., before taking further action.”

It somehow doesn’t have that ring of urgency.

And yet, as The Telegraph’s Blomfield also notes, “many in [Israel] believe time is running out.”

Blomfield quotes Ephraim Asculai, former IAEA official and an Israeli expert on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that “if the Iranian regime decides to do so, it can produce a nuclear explosive device within a year, plus or minus a few months.” There are also warnings that Iran could soon be transferring most of its nuclear production under a mountain near Qom, making it much harder—or impossible—to bomb from the air.

Is Israel, then, facing the threat essentially alone? If so, it would hardly be unprecedented. There’s an inglorious history of the United States and Europe leaving Israel to fend for itself against threats, sometimes even existential ones.

It happened in Israel’s 1948-1949 War for Independence, when it found itself embargoed by the West (with Britain aiding the Arab side) and had to turn to the Soviet bloc for arms. Just before the 1967 Six Day War, Israel’s “ally” France slapped an arms embargo on the region that was mainly aimed at Israel.

The report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday that provided strong, “credible” evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon was not a surprise. It simply confirmed what the US, Israel, and much of the west has been saying about Tehran’s clandestine nuclear program for a decade or more. More to the point is why the IAEA chose to make the most definitive statement on Iranian nuclear intentions at this time and what was included in the report that led to this 180 degree change in the UN nuclear watchdog’s conclusions.

Equally important as the revelations regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions contained in the report is the question of what can be done about it? It is here that the world divides, with some nations advocating airstrikes against Iranian facilities, while most prefer to increase the severity of sanctions.

Much of the intelligence gathered for the report has been in the possession of the IAEA for years, and many observers believe that the previous head of the agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, deliberately softened IAEA reports in order to entice Iran to negotiate a settlement. Indeed, a large part of the report released on Tuesday is culled directly from a secret paper written in 2008 for the IAEA that ElBaradei never published, but which provided much of the impetus for the agency’s current conclusions about the Iranian program.

“The level of detail is unbelievable,” said a Western diplomat, quoted in the New York Times. Indeed, the IAEA seemed particularly careful in providing documents, transcripts of interviews with scientists both in and outside of Iran, and publicizing intelligence gleaned from 10 different countries in order to assuage fears in the international community that the evidence was provided mostly by the CIA and Mossad.

For example, Reuters reports that two member states passed along intelligence showing that Iran had carried out computer modeling studies “relevant to nuclear weapons” as recently as 2008-09. “The application of such studies to anything other than a nuclear explosive is unclear to the agency,” the IAEA said.

Beyond laying to rest questions about the credibility of sources, another addition to the report that had been missing in previous IAEA analysis is the effort to marry a nuclear warhead to Iran’s existing array of medium-range missiles. “I think the facts lay out a pretty overwhelming case that this was a pretty sophisticated nuclear weapons effort aimed at miniaturizing a warhead for a ballistic missile,” said prominent US arms control expert David Albright. “It’s overwhelming in the amount of details, it is a pretty convincing case,” he told Reuters.

The major difference between reports generated under ElBaradei and today is the tough, no nonsense Japanese diplomat who now heads the IAEA. Yukiya Amano has tried — within the limited sphere of his authority — to hold Iran accountable for its secrecy and refusal to answer questions about the extent of its nuclear research and development programs. Far more than ElBaradei, who at times seemed to be Iran’s primary nuclear enabler, Amano has fought his own board to toughen reports on the Iranian program, resisting efforts to soften language and obfuscate conclusions.

In this case, it may not be a slam dunk — there is no “smoking gun” that reveals Iranian intentions with any certainty — but, as Amano notes, there is “a thousand pages of documents” that showed “research, development and testing activities” that strongly suggest a military aspect to the Iranian’s proclaimed “peaceful” nuclear program.

Why release such a strongly worded and detailed report now? Amano, suggested one diplomat, may have reached the limit of his patience with Iranian evasions and might be trying to use the IAEA as a spur to get Iran back to the negotiating table. “Amano thinks that the best role the IAEA can play is as a technical agency that is forthcoming about the information that it has,” the diplomat said. Contrary to belief in some quarters in the West, the sanctions against Tehran have hurt far more than the regime has let on. While they haven’t materially affected the Iranian nuclear program, shortages of basics, inflation, and a lack of spare parts have deeply impacted ordinary people and caused much anger at the government. Another round of sanctions targeting the Iranian petrol industry would bite even harder, although both Russia and China oppose any more sanctions at all at this time. Amano realizes this and believes if the choice is between tougher sanctions or a military strike, Moscow and Beijing may reluctantly come on board for another round of Security Council actions against Tehran. It’s an admitted long shot, but looking at the alternative, it’s a diplomat’s hope to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Just hours before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna released its much awaited report confirming Iran’s “development of a nuclear explosive device,” this very topic was vigorously addressed at a forum at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s upper east side. Excerpts from the powerful 2011 documentary “Iranium” (which documents the genesis of Iran’s nuclear threat, beginning with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the ideology espoused by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini until today) was screened before the 200 audience members. Simulcast to a variety of venues around the country, the distinguished panel members had the opportunity to answer questions from audience members who were not present at the location.

Moderated by the film’s director, Alex Traiman (who was also involved in the production of other films documenting the rise of radical Islam and those who carry out terrorist attacks in the name of Allah such as “Obsession” and “The Third Jihad”), the panel consisted of Nazie Eftekhari, a prominent Iranian-American activist and the founder and CEO of The Araz Group, a family of companies that includes HealthEZ and America’s PPO. Having grown up in Iran, Ms. Eftekhari’s prodigious efforts have been focused on spotlighting the excessive human rights abuses against Iranian citizens that take place every day in her native country along with initiating a campaign of global support for the protection of the civil rights of Iranian dissidents.

Joining Ms. Eftekhari on the panel was former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, who served in this post during the Reagan administration. Mr. Perle is a member of several think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Center for Security Policy. He is also a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

Opening with images from “Iranium” in which media personalities report on the immense amount of pressure Iranian embassies throughout the US and Canada placed on those theaters screening the film and their demands that presentations be canceled, the panelists offered a historical overview of the progenitors of the Islamic revolution and political metamorphoses that have gripped Iran over the last century. “When Khomeini came to power in 1979, he was never elevated to Ayatollah, despite common misconceptions,” said Ms. Eftekhari. She added that the previous Ayatollah and the Shah of Iran severed ties in 1962 and it was then that Iranian women were accorded the right to vote. “The Shah’s father was a secular ruler who did not force women to cover their hair and if the various mullahs disagreed with his ruling they would be horsewhipped.”

Condemning then president Jimmy Carter for welcoming Khomeini and helping in the Shah’s ouster, Ms. Eftekhari said she saw a glaring resemblance between the demonstrations leading to the Arab Spring and the Iranian revolution of 1979. “As a liberal Democrat; as a supporter of Hillary Clinton and a fan of Barack Obama, I was terribly upset and extremely disappointed to know that the leaders of my country did not stand up and speak out when the people of Iran exercised their rights of free speech and dissent in June of 2009, following the national elections. Hillary Clinton has said that the leadership of those dissidents demonstrating in the streets of Teheran did not want help from the USA and I simply don’t believe that.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released what is being called “the most damning report ever published” by the U.N. watchdog. The evidence in the report shows that Iran has a secret enrichment program, is simulating nuclear explosions, working on nuclear triggers, and developing a nuclear warhead. The report even says that Iran has made preparations for an underground nuclear test.

The IAEA report focuses on the Parchin military base 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. The base has hundreds of buildings, tunnels and bunkers and IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit. It is here that Iran is carrying out tests to simulate nuclear explosions. In 2003, one large test of high-explosives was done to assist with the development of a nuclear warhead that can be fitted onto a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. There is a chamber designed for a test of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives, a suitable amount for a nuclear explosion.

Iran has obtained the designs for a nuclear weapon and is actively working on a warhead. As of 2006, it was working on neutron initiators, often referred to as the “nuclear trigger” for setting off a nuclear explosion. There is no civilian application for this device. In 2008 and 2009, Iran was researching how to make the core of a warhead where the bomb fuel is stored. There have also been computer simulations of nuclear explosions. A Russian scientist named Vyacheslav Danilenko taught the Iranians how to develop nuclear triggers, test nuclear weapons and develop a warhead from 1996 to 2002.

The IAEA also discloses Iran’s  “Green Salt Project,” a secret uranium enrichment project hidden from U.N. inspectors. The program’s objective is to acquire uranium in order to create the nuclear warhead. The underground Fodor site near Qom, which was revealed in 2009, is part of this project. The mountain-based site is designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges, far from what is necessary for a domestic energy program but enough for nuclear bomb production. The report says at least 412 centrifuges have been installed there and it also houses a stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

Iran is even preparing for an underground nuclear weapons test. The IAEA has obtained Iranian government documents in Farsi discussing the necessary logistics for such a test. One document from 2008 mentions the existence of a 400 meter shaft about 6 miles from the “firing control point.” The report concludes that Iran could make a nuclear bomb in the matter of months.

The IAEA’s revelations come shortly after a former member of the Revolutionary Guards who spied for the CIA, Reza Kahlili, brought renewed attention to reports that Iran already has a nuclear arsenal.

Yossef Bodansky, who served as the Director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare from 1988 to 2004 and authored “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” presents the most detailed account of Iran’s alleged acquisition of nuclear weapons. In his book, “The High Cost of Peace,” he alleges that in the summer of 1991, the Iranian regime ordered its intelligence service to scour the former Soviet Union to search for nuclear weapons. It made contact with officials in Kazakhstan, and the Iranians sent a delegation to the country in early September.

The Kazakhs agreed to provide disassembled nuclear weapons and a team to help reassemble them after their arrival in Iran. The deal was finalized in December 1991, with Iran agreeing to purchase two 40-kiloton nuclear warheads, one aerial nuclear bomb for a MiG-27 and one 152-mm nuclear artillery shell. These weapons arrived in Iran and became operational by mid-1992. The aerial bomb was stored at the Shahid Babai Base in Isfahan. Bodansky claims that the Iranians envisioned using it in a nuclear suicide attack on a U.S. carrier by a North Korean-trained pilot. The two warheads went to a base in Lavizan in Tehran.

According to an account in Ken Timmerman’s “Countdown to Crisis,” Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major-General and future presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai led the delegation to Kazakhstan. His story likewise states that the weapons were disassembled and brought to Tehran, but that key parts were missing. The Iranians reached out to North Korea for help in filling the gaps, which proved more difficult than anticipated to fill.

Istanbul, Turkey - The UN's top nuclear official on Monday said the Islamic Republic was not providing the "necessary cooperation" to guarantee that the Iran nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment comes as Iran has been stepping up uranium enrichment levels and expanding its nuclear fuel cycle plans in recent weeks, moves that have prompted President Barack Obama to warn of tougher sanctions against Iran.

"The agency continues...to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, but we cannot confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities because Iran has not provided the agency with the necessary cooperation," Yukiya Amano, the new IAEA chief, told the agency's governing board at the start of its meeting in Vienna this week.

Mr. Amano asked for "clarification of issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," and that Iran make "full implementation of its safeguards agreement and its other obligations [a] matter of high priority."

The tougher IAEA line comes as momentum builds in Washington to impose more sanctions upon Iran - a "pressure track" to add to three sets of UN Security Council sanctions and an array of US and European measures that already target Iran.

"The pressure track does not mean that the engagement track is closed," Glyn Davies, the US Ambassador to the IAEA, said in a recent Monitor interview in Istanbul. "But we are looking for Iranian bona fides. There is such an overhang of issues, it would require a significant change by [the] Iranians."

The recent back-and-forth with Iran over its nuclear program "has been maximally frustrating" because of the mixed messages from Tehran, said Amb. Davies.

All they're doing is buying time. No one seems willing to call them on it.

On Monday, Iran took issue with Amano's remarks. "We have fully cooperated with the agency. This cooperation will continue," said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Tougher sanctions? Analysts expect this week's meeting of the IAEA's governing board to pave the way for a tougher, fourth set of UN sanctions against Iran as it tussles with the IAEA over unresolved issues that point to a weaponization effort, but are based on US and Western intelligence that Iran says is fabricated....

And we're right where we were four or five years ago. The only difference is, Iran has had all that time to progress with its plans.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran's most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.

An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 -- specifically, work on a neutron initiator.

The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan's bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint.

"Although Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes, there is no civil application," said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which has analysed hundreds of pages of documents related to the Iranian programme. "This is a very strong indicator of weapons work."

The documents have been seen by intelligence agencies from several Western countries, including Britain. A senior source at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that they had been passed to the UN's nuclear watchdog.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said yesterday: "We do not comment on intelligence, but our concerns about Iran's nuclear programme are clear. Obviously this document, if authentic, raises serious questions about Iran's intentions."

Responding to The Times' findings, an Israeli government spokesperson said: "Israel is increasingly concerned about the state of the Iranian nuclear programme and the real intentions that may lie behind it."...

Mr Fitzpatrick said: "Is this the smoking gun? That's the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium."

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.