Another Iran intelligence source?

Amir Taheri:

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The new NIE is problematic on several accounts. To start with, its methodology remains a mystery. It seems to rely heavily on minutes of secret conversations between senior Iranian military leaders and their political bosses in Tehran. That, of course, opens the possibility of disinformation: Isn't it possible that the Khomeinist leadership in Tehran cooked up the whole thing to confuse its enemies?

One possible source for those memoranda was a senior Iranian diplomat who, according to Ahmadinejad, contacted the British and provided them with "top-secret material" on Iran's nuclear program. But why would the diplomat do that - and why should that same diplomat be arrested and then quickly exonerated of all charges?

Alternately, what if Gen. Reza Asgari who defected to America - or, according to one version, was abducted by the Americans last year - was a mole sent by Tehran to provide Washington with false minutes of the supposed conversations? The possibilities for political spin, not to mention concocting yarns of espionage, are simply endless.

The estimate doesn't change the fact that Tehran has always claimed and continues to assert with great self-confidence that it never had a secret program. Thus, this is not a case like South Africa, Libya or North Korea - all of which admitted the existence of their respective nuclear programs before undertaking to scrap them.

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AS I have written before, Tehran's policy has never been aimed at actually making a nuclear weapon. From the late '60s (even before the Khomeinists seized power) it has aimed at acquiring what's called a "nuclear surge capacity." This means having the knowledge, technological base, infrastructure and raw material needed to make nuclear weapons in a short time - without actually making the bomb.

It's like someone who builds a kitchen and assembles the ingredients to make a soup at any moment - but decides not to do so for the time being.

Acquiring "surge capacity" was a key part of the late shah's overall strategy and has remained a pillar of Iran's defense doctrine. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stopped the nuclear program in 1979 along with many of the shah's projects - but it was restarted long ago by President Hashemi Rafsanjani and has been pursued with varying degrees of vigor by his two successors.

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This suggest Iran is doing what Saddam hoped to do. Keep everything in place to build WMD when the heat is off. Certainly much of their public conduct suggest such an ambition. They obviously do not need the centrifuges for power production since they can get the fuel elsewhere for less.