Iran's Nuclear 'Secrets'

Here's a shocker: Iran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear program.

I'm shocked. SHOCKED!

Why isn't Iran on board with Obama's new world order of peace and love and understanding?

Hasn't Mahmoud Ahmadinejad been listening to Obama's comments about nuclear weapons and his commitment to achieve a nuclear weapons-FREE world?

From the Washington Post:

The government of Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is building a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plant for making fuel, the nuclear watchdog agency said Friday.

President Obama will call attention to the existence of the underground facility in an early-morning statement to reporters here before the opening of the G-20 economic summit, and will say that Western intelligence agencies have been tracking the facility for years. U.S. officials said Obama decided to disclose the program's existence after learning that Iran had become aware that it was no longer a secret.

Obama's statement, which will be made jointly with the leaders of France and Great Britain, was added to his schedule late Thursday night. It comes a day after Obama chaired a United Nations Security Council session on halting the spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world.

Although Obama referred to the nuclear ambitions of both Iran and North Korea during the session, diplomatic maneuvering kept any mention of the two countries out of a resolution that the council unanimously approved. The omission prompted passionate criticism from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will join Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Friday morning to decry Iran's newly disclosed facility.

"How, before the eyes of the world, could we justify meeting without tackling them?" Sarkozy scolded Thursday, referring to Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not a virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions."

Sarkozy is learning that Obama doesn't live in the real world. Obama's flunkies don't live in the real world, at least not until they get slapped in the face by it.

From the New York Times, here's more on Iran's nuclear program.

Mr. Obama was first briefed on Iran’s project before he became president, as part of the detailed intelligence reports provided by the then-director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. Mr. Obama has received updated intelligence on it “several times,” one senior aide said Thursday evening.

In advance of Friday morning’s announcement, Mr. Obama sent top intelligence officials to brief the I.A.E.A.’s chief inspector, Olli Heinonen. Other American diplomats and intelligence officials shared their findings with China, Russia and Germany, all important players in the negotiations with Iran.

Earlier this week, Mr. Obama’s discussions with President Hu Jintao of China on Tuesday and his meeting with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia on Wednesday focused largely on Iran, administration officials said. During his meeting with Mr. Medvedev in particular, Mr. Obama pressed his case, expressing pessimism that talks scheduled for next week with the Iranians over the nuclear issue would yield much progress, administration officials said.

“The president made clear that while he was willing to engage, he was also clear-eyed about the prospects of that engagement,” a senior administration official said.

Mr. Obama had, by that point, made a giant step toward getting Russia more amenable to the idea of sanctions against Iran — something Moscow does not like — by announcing last week that he was replacing President George W. Bush’s missile defense with a version less threatening to Moscow. That issue, one administration official said, completely changed the dynamic during Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Medvedev.

While it is unclear whether Mr. Obama briefed Mr. Medvedev about the Qum facility during that meeting at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the two leaders nonetheless emerged with Mr. Medvedev promising, for the first time publicly, that Russia would be amenable to tougher sanctions.

And on Thursday, in Pittsburgh, Mr. Medvedev reiterated his stance. “When all instruments have been used and failed, one can use international legal sanctions,” Mr. Medvedev told students at the University of Pittsburgh. “I think we should continue to promote positive incentives for Iran and at the same time push it to make all its programs transparent and open. Should we fail in that case, we’ll consider other options.”

One administration official said that the United States was hoping that with Russia on board the idea of tougher sanctions, China would follow. Mr. Obama is planning to visit Beijing and Shanghai in early November, just around the same time that a sanctions resolution is expected to be introduced at the Security Council.

It is a far cry from the time when Mr. Obama first made waves with his views on Iran policy, back in 2007, when he said during a Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., that he would, as president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was “ridiculous.”

Indeed, he came into office and made a series of overtures to the Iranian regime, sending a videotaped message in the spring to wish the regime and the Iranian people a Happy Nowruz, or new year, lifting restrictions on American diplomats’ interactions with their Iranian counterparts and sending two letters to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging warmer relations between America and Iran after 30 years of enmity.

“The response we got was, shall we say, chilling,” one administration official said. In particular, the Iranian government’s handling of the presidential elections in June solidified the belief among Mr. Obama’s top Iran officials that it was time to toughen up on the country, the official said.

Oh, now it's time toughen up on the country.

Good grief. How incredibly naive they've been! How dangerously incompetent!

But Obama still does have his supporters.

In an NYT op-ed piece today, Mikhail Gorbachev praises Obama's recent moves regarding nukes and the missile defense shield.

I don't find a great deal comfort in that.

Regarding the missile defense site in Poland and the Czech Republic, Gorbachev writes:

Many of President Obama’s critics in the United States insist that he “caved in” to Russian pressure, virtually leaving America’s NATO allies to fend for themselves. There is nothing behind this argument other than the old stereotype of “bad Russia,” a Russia that is always wrong.

Consider the merits of the case. Russia’s leaders have been saying for some time that the fear of Iran developing effective long-range missiles in the near future was not grounded in fact. Now, after a thorough review by intelligence and defense officials, the United States government has come to the same conclusion, holding that Tehran is perhaps at least five years or even a decade away from such capacity.

The initial reaction by some politicians and commentators in Poland and the Czech Republic is no less odd. They seem to enjoy the role of a spoiler in relations between other countries and Russia. Voices of realism and caution are routinely rejected, and the opinion of their own citizens, who by and large have no use for radars and missiles, is brushed aside.

In Russia, President Obama’s decision has been well received. It also met with support in Europe, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy of France lauding it. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, called it “a chance to strengthen European security.” Indeed, if the president’s decision is followed by further serious steps, it will provide an opportunity for us to strengthen global security as well as reach a new level of cooperation in ridding the world of nuclear danger.

At their meeting in Moscow in early July, Presidents Obama and Medvedev reaffirmed the relationship between strategic offensive weapons and missile defense. The two nations continue arms reduction talks and, judging by cautious diplomatic statements, they seem to be on course to complete them by Dec. 5, when the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — which I signed with President George H. W. Bush in 1991 — is due to expire.

This week’s United Nations meeting marks the next stage of progress. It is vital that other nations come away from the meeting believing that America and Russia are moving toward verifiable nuclear arms reductions, and that by the time the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference is held at the United Nations next May, they will have made progress toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

Sure.

Why worry about Iran?