Spent a lot of my day thinking about Iran. Spent a lot of my day reading about Iran. Here's where I am: first off, the trip. Because of personal commitments I made earlier this year, if I don't get a positive answer from Iran this evening and a reasonable time frame for the visa I'm not going. Doesn't have a thing to do with fear of Iran and it has everything to do with fear of my mother-in-law who will come visit later this summer. If I am off galivanting around in Iran (or elsewhere), she's liable to take my wife back to Russia. Lesson: you don't mess with Galina! Besides, I love my wife and wish to remain married. So, if I don't get a good answer this evening from Iran, well, hopefully I'll be able to go later this year or early next. We'll see. Believe me, I am every bit as disappointed as you are, if not moreso.

So, I did some digging around on the enrichment issue. What one nuclear expert tells me is that this doesn't change previous community accepted estimates of Iran having a workable nuclear weapon until 2009 at the earliest. Yes, Iran has an indigenous enrichment capability. I think his words were, "don't sweat it."

Ahmedinejad claimed they would have 3,000 centrifuges installed by March
2007. Unclear that Iran can do that without operating a larger cascade (say 6 164 machine cascades at the PFEP). That would move up the timeline, but not that much.

So, on the Iranian side I'm really not so worried (and I really want my visa!).

more after the jump

It's the US side that has me more concerned. But not that much.It really is essential to the whole issue that you read these two Bill Arkin posts at the WaPo (here and here).

A couple of things jump out at me. First, this graf from the Wild Speculation post:

How much did nuclear weapons really play in these war games, from the Future of Warfare games through Global 92 and into TIG-95? First of all, none of the games were posited because Iran obtained nuclear weapons; the country is assumed in all the games to be a nuclear power.

So, if that is the baseline assumption of all these plans, are there plans to atack a non-nuclear Iran? Plans based on the Bush Doctrine? And if not, why? Am I the only one that finds this admission odd? Is this Arkin's underhanded way of saying, "maybe a nuclear Iran isn't the end of the world?"

Second, from the Goldilocks post:

I'll leave aside for a moment that many of these experts are the same ones who were quoted in 2002 about Iraq, the same voices who didn't better inform the public (or the Congress) then to make the best decision and are now being given a platform on Iran…

These experts need to be flushed out of their comfortable anonymity super fast. No comfy backgrounders this time. Lay your prognosis out in full public view. What we need in this country is an honest, all cards on-the-table facing-up debate about Iran. As Arkin says, "there should be no more slam dunks."

To wit, I leave you to ponder these grafs:

A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing for the unfortunate against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.

The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.

Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion "is not contemplated" -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.

Like early 2002, the floodgates have opened and the stories about Iran war planning have started. Some claim Dick Cheney has already made the decision, some claim war this spring, some say the U.S. and Israel are collaborating. When The Washington Post and The New Yorker purport to write about these plans in major pieces, I need to know more than the Bush administration is planning options: What options? What alternatives? What assumptions?

It just isn't news that the sun will rise tomorrow, nor is it that if it gets hot, all sorts of bad things could happen.

In an earlier post I said, "Let's have that debate."

Well, we're having it.

~

For further reading see, the CFR website, here and here. And the Global Voices Online Iran blog.