Iran 'operating 4,000 nuclear centrifuges'

Iran is operating about 4,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges and it is installing several thousand more, the state news agency IRNA quoted the deputy foreign minister as saying Friday.

"There are nearly 4,000 centrifuges working in the Natanz enrichment facility... another 3,000 centrifuges are being installed," IRNA quoted Alireza Sheikh Attar as saying in an interview with state television.

In July, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had up to 6,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, the process at the heart of Western fears that Tehran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been probing Iran's nuclear activities for several years, said in May that Tehran was operating 3,500 centrifuges in Natanz, a huge underground complex in central Iran.

Iran is under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to freeze enrichment and risks further sanctions for failing to give a clear response to an incentives package offered by six world powers in return for a halt to the sensitive work.

This latest revelation (?) that Iran is engaging in uranium enrichment reminded me of the below letter I sent to all the Senators and my Congressman last December.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of November 2007 was titled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. An intention is a future determination to act in a particular manner. A capability represents possession of sufficient mental and/or physical power to perform an act. Intentions and capabilities are the two types of information intelligence agencies can contribute to formulation of policy decisions. The 2005 Iran report seemed appreciative of this legitimate present and future focus, assessing Iranian determination to develop nuclear weapons, and likelihood to achieve that capability in the next decade.

The current NIE intrudes into policy advocacy by fraudulently using a data point, belonging to text, and contorting it into the primary judgment. The estimate Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and had not restarted, states past circumstances representing neither intentions nor capabilities. This first point crafted the character of the document, even though the next two judgments about Iran’s capabilities made substantially the same points as in 2005.

Another indication the NIE has degenerated into Washington bureaucratic/political circus derives from the bold face statement under Scope. Supposedly, the NIE does not assume Iranian intention to acquire nuclear weapons, but assertions follow of intentions and capabilities to produce weapons grade uranium, solve associated technical problems, and make subsequent political decisions to proceed with program execution. Contradictory statements of Iranian policy momentums, and present technical capability estimates continually reflect upon the defining Scope paragraph. As a result the managers of these 16 agencies cannot be held accountable regardless of Iranian program outcomes. As a result political exposition advocating an accommodative policy toward Iran and its aims retains primary rhetorical stature.

The current NIE perverts reasons for Iran’s estimated halt of its nuclear weapons program. Contrary to report assertions, there were no traditional Western style diplomatic efforts underway. However, there is no mention of military diplomacy during that period removing the immediately adjacent Taliban and Hussein regimes. The fact Libya eliminated WMD programs, and the supposition Iran halted their nuclear weapons initiatives relates to intentional or unwitting application of Oriental/Asian diplomatic principles. Rulers such as Ahmadinejad and Qaddafi are responsive to diplomacy residing on a continuum including war. Talks, conferences and economic measures serve as war without bloodshed, war serves as diplomacy with bloodshed, and intelligence and espionage provide a medium invigorating all options.

For Iran the operative word is “supposition”, because of defection of General Abireza Asgari, who had extensive access to Iran’s nuclear and intelligence secrets. Nowhere does the document qualify statements to recognize traditional counterintelligence damage control, which should block every channel he had into Iran’s nuclear program and intelligence agencies. People would be reassigned and offices dissolved. New locations would be found using new people now under increased security measures. People who had to be retained would be under continuous surveillance, and reside at more easily isolated locations. The organizations that had to be retained would include new departments and divisions. All information would be relocated ensuring accessibility required new clearances, code names and ciphers. All individuals serving in the successor programs would be re-vetted, including those serving in regular military, government or civilian positions, which interact with the programs. The continuing public, but unexamined uranium enrichment process, requires less disturbance, because running the same centrifuges can produce weapons grade or power reactor grade product.

An assessment with moderate to high confidence should always require at least two independent sources. If the resulting judgment overturns previous evidence, then the data should be subject to special scrutiny and skepticism. Given Iranians did the expected; the possibility of obtaining two or even one trusted source from behind a new security wall within a closed society becomes very unlikely. Ahmadinejad saying U.S. suffered a fatal blow with this NIE, and his foreign minister declaring victory, indicates successful security measures were employed. An NIE assessing with high to moderate confidence that Iran halted years ago, and had not restarted a nuclear weapons program, indicates dominating insolence and premeditated ignorance supporting a political agenda. My reasoning is hardly unique when France, Germany, Britain, Israel plus NATO and even the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency find little creditable value in the document.

This latest NIE presents another milepost on the way to complete corrosion of the U.S. intelligence community. Determined destruction began in the 1970’s as the Church and Pike Committees were allowed to apply their internally confirmed morality to the CIA, which can only provide value when operating powerfully within a shrewd and ruthless world. Congress under pretense of “reasserting” authority plundered authority given to all presidents since George Washington to conduct clandestine operations. The human intelligence network agencies built for the Cold War fatally degraded, because “new morality” decreed we could no longer deal with unscrupulous and flawed people, who were more likely double agents. Recruitment of future human resources was discouraged to be replaced by the unverified incites from technological marvels. The lack of HUMINT institutionalized a culture of failure most recently demonstrated by fumbled presumptions about weapons in Libya, Iraq and Iran. Congressional blindness seeking interminable briefing requests and micro-managing operations compounded with petulant demands to confirm ever more intelligence officials achieves the shallow political theater needed for re-election.

The first responsibility borne by the three branches of government compels serious consideration of Alexander Hamilton’s admonition that power to defend our country ought to exist without limitation, providing energetic defenses capable of thwarting dangers as well as responding to attacks. Intelligence and espionage have been inseparable from effective war and diplomacy since Sun Tzu discussed foreknowledge 2,500 years ago. We remain perilously vulnerable to catastrophe as long as the Executive branch suffers constraints never envisioned for this country, and unacceptable in other Western countries. Consistent application of effective espionage and intelligence, independent of election and news cycles, provides the medium uniting the contrasting coercive and ferocious aspects of Oriental/Asian diplomacy applicable to emerging opponents.

Instead we have retreated into Western neuroses where war and diplomacy are mutually exclusive. We have gifted Ahmadinejad the initiative to apply threats of or actual violence with endless dissembling, which invites opponents to continual internal debates repeatedly narrowing parameters for national interests. The Administration allowed recalcitrant intelligence bureaucrats to initiate such a debate when they wrote the NIE so as to undermine four years of diplomacy and U.N. Resolution 1737. We face the real possibility crippled diplomacy will degenerate into appeasement to be abandoned in only the most horrific circumstances. We face the specter of events prompting Ahmadinejad to launch a shattering, unanticipated nuclear attack to usher in a world of chaos for his cherished 12th Imam.

I have a co-worker who is an American citizen of Iranian (Persian) decent...

Decent guy, very knowledgable, professional, and a solid information source...

He just left for a trip back to Iran yesterday...I hope he has a safe trip...

We have had good discussions about all this enrichment and centrifuges and the countries ambitions...

Be said two things to me before he took off this week...

Be wary of the source of all of this information about the program, because he believes it might be a diversion from some other issue/threat...You say, “Well how much more of a functional “home grown” nuclear bomb in Iran be???”

Good question, something to think about...

The other...What would more destabilize the entire world...

A city dissapearing because of a bomb they build???

Or,

Anyone going in and attacking Iran and supposedly knocking out, either eliminating the program for many years, or, putting them slightly behind in producing the inevitable???

I would forget about the delivering system for a nuke like this to be anything more sophisticated than putting it in the back of a truck, and driving it across the border into Iraq and pulling the trigger when it gets into Baghdad...This would be the way I would do it, and it would be effective, no matter what the yield would be...

If we really want to take the fight out of Iran and it’s deceptive information program, it would be better to ignore it all, yet, it would be irresponsible to put our heads into the sand...Sounds oxymoronic, but the more they hear about how we are paying attention to their “mini-me” or the shrill style of Amenidijhad’s (Ross Perot) style of existence...He feeds off of this...

The Olympics really took him out of the limelight...(just throwing thast out there for perspective...

If there ever was an opportunity to get a feel for the “real” story inside that country...We’ll know in a week and a half when he gets back from his cousin’s wedding...

Don’t get me wrong...I would think it prudent tosupport or actually conduct a pre-emptive action against the known facilities conducting the enrichment program, AND go after where this “bomb(s)” is actually being fabricated...

But we all know Barack Obama and his band of merry men in tight shiny pants will not do a damn thing (and even then I would doubt) about this until it is too late...

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