HOW'D THAT EMPTY BLUSTER WORK OUT FOR SADDAM?:

Tehran's nuclear bravado may exceed its expertise (William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, February 4, 2007, NY Times)

The many setbacks and outright failures of Tehran's experimental program suggest that its bluster may far outstrip its technical expertise. And the problems help explain U.S. intelligence estimates that Iran is at least four years away from producing a bomb.

After weeks of limited access inside Iran, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have reported that Tehran has succeeded in manufacturing parts for about 3,000 centrifuges, the devices that can spin uranium into reactor fuel -- or bomb fuel. In recent days, the Iranians have begun installing the machines and supporting gear in a cavernous plant at Natanz, which would be a potential target if the United States or one of its allies decided that diplomacy would never keep Iran from getting the bomb.

What the Iranians are not talking about, experts with access to the atomic agency's information say, is that their earlier, experimental effort to make centrifuges work has struggled to achieve even limited success and appears to have been put on the back burner so the country's leaders can declare that they are moving to the next stage.

To enrich uranium on an industrial scale, the machines must spin at incredibly high speeds for months on end. But the latest report of the atomic agency, issued in November, said the primitive machines of Iran's pilot plant ran only intermittently, to enrich small amounts of uranium. And the Iranians succeeded in setting up just two of the planned six groupings of 164 centrifuges at the pilot plant.

MORE (via Kevin Whited):
HARD CASES (Nicholas Lemann, 2007-01-29, The New Yorker)

The Administration has exhausted what was once an enormous stock of political capital by repeatedly insisting that it has uncovered the truth, and then being proved wrong. Right now, Iran, because of its size, wealth, military power, location, religious and civilian leadership, and ambitions, really is a serious threat--much more so than Iraq was four years ago. The United States' ability to do anything about that threat has been severely degraded by the Iraq war. The damage is not so much military as epistemic: if nobody believes our accounts of threats, then we can't assemble alliances to counteract them.

How'd that American inability to build alliances work out for Saddam?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2007 10:02 AM