This today in the NY Times:
Western intelligence officials now want to determine whether there are even more secret enrichment sites. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates dodged the question of whether there were additional sites during a television appearance over the weekend. Washington has said there may be more than a dozen sites involved in the nuclear program, though there have been no public indications as to what they are used for. Graham Allison, the author of “Nuclear Terrorism” and a Harvard professor who focuses on proliferation, said he could not conceive of Iran’s building only one such site. “How likely is it that the Qum facility is all there is? Zero. A prudent manager of a serious program would certainly have a number of sites,” he said. After all, Mr. Allison said, the lesson Iran took away from Israel’s destruction of an Iraqi reactor more than 25 years ago is to spread facilities around the country.
This afternoon, I heard an analyst say on Chris Matthews’s program that President Obama may have a very narrow window of time to persuade the Israelis not to act against the Iranians—perhaps three months, and even, perhaps, just a few weeks. The Israelis appear to have set themselves into the role of George Bush just prior to the Iraq invasion, insularly consulting their own intelligence estimates, and ignoring the cautionary council of allies. We’ll see how it plays out, but it ain’t looking good. If Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, I understand Israel’s alarm, but you better be sure, and you better not miss (if you try to take out the facilities). Fasten your seatbelts. Global turbulance ahead.
