DNI: About That "No Iranian Nuke Program" Thing? Uh, Never Mind [someone]

This story seems to have been lost in the political fallout of Super Tuesday:

At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence director, Michael McConnell, said [...] "I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted."

Mr. McConnell was referring to the specific Iranian program to design potential nuclear warheads, which the December estimate said had halted in 2003. But in his opening testimony, Mr. McConnell noted that two other components of the nuclear program were moving ahead — the enrichment of uranium, which he said was the most difficult part of making a bomb, and the development of long-range missiles capable of hitting North Africa and Europe.

(As far as an actual warhead design goes, why would they even need to work on it? Surely North Korea and/or AQ Khan will provide one off-the-shelf when the time comes.)

[UPDATE - PA]
Risen claims the Clinton administration already gave the Iranians the design for a Russian nuclear weapon. CIA supposedly farkled the design of course, but the claim is that the design farkling was superficial and easily detected/corrected. More here at a Guardian story about the claimed op. Article snip below the fold.

...On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either...

posted by xgenghisx at 11:17 AM

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