Waiting for Tehran - What's News Tonight

Why this Report Now?

The NYT is giving enough detail to convince anyone that Tehran has an active nuclear weapons program. This is not news except perhaps to the American electorate (and to candidate Obama?) that wanted to ignore the fact and use the 2007 bizarrely misleading NIE report as a genuine document. What this report does now is make the very good case that the Bush administration chose to ignore and avoid Tehran's nukes these last years. Why? My best signals source calls it "the Faustian deal." The US promised Tehran that we would not attack its nukes, or challenge its long term plans in the region, in exchange for Tehran letting the US leave Iraq with a victory. Or at least leave Iraq with the Iraqis who work for Tehran (P.M. Maliki is the Iranian viceroy in Iraq) in charge. The bargain worked. The Bush administration ends its watch with the Iraqi army taking control of the Green Zone and Iraq security. At the same time, Tehran has an estimated 4000 or more P2 centrifuges working which will soon enough produce material for many bombs.