sowing doubt in geopolitics

If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be grand entertainment to watch the unfolding of the growing counterattack on the NIE report.

Case in point—the WSJ ($$) reports that an “Iranian opposition group” says that Iran in fact resumed its nuclear-weapon-production program in 2004. This group also provides details:

Group Says Iran Resumed Weapon Program 

The Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran’s nuclear-fuel program said a U.S. intelligence analysis is correct that Tehran shut down its weaponization program in 2003, but claims that the program was relocated and restarted in 2004.

Read with a rain of salt—since the group, NCRI, doesn’t have a track record of reliability and its politics are characterized as Marxist—but here are the details:

“What the first part of the NIE says is right, that they halted their weaponization research in 2003,” said Mohammad Mohaddessin, foreign-affairs chief for the NCRI. “But the second part, that they stopped until at least the middle of 2007, is wrong. They scattered the weaponization program to other locations and restarted in 2004.”

Equipment was relocated first from Lavisan-Shian to another military compound in Tehran’s Lavisan district, the Center for Readiness and Advanced Technology, Mr. Mohaddessin said. Two devices designed to measure radiation levels were moved to Malek-Ashtar University in Isfahan and to a defense ministry hospital in Tehran, he said. Other equipment was sent to other locations the NCRI hasn’t been able to identify, he said.

“Their strategy was that if the IAEA found any one piece of this research program, it would be possible to justify it as civilian. But so long as it was all together, they wouldn’t be able to,” Mr. Mohaddessin said.

Meanwhile, however, the AP reports that Ahmadinejad has declared victory over the NIE and is losing no time in pressing his (perceived) advantage. He has renewed his invitation to Bush to debate him.

But he has also upped the ante. Now he claims that there are other issues besides the nuclear issue that must be resolved before Iran and the United States can make friends—namely, Israel:

The hard-line leader told reporters that an “entirely different” situation between the two countries could be created if more steps like the intelligence report followed.

We consider this measure by the U.S. government a positive step. It is a step forward,” Ahmadinejad said.

If one or two other steps are taken, the issues we have in front of us will be entirely different and will lose their complexity, and the way will be open for the resolution of basic issues in the region and in dealings between the two sides,” he said. …

“Regional nations have rights and want to fully use their rights. Respecting these rights is a serious change in strategy. This is the next step. If it is done, then you will see that … it is not that a 60-year issue can’t be resolved,” he said referring to an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Why would he choose to up the ante?

Because Iran’s leaders need to have external enemies in order to deflect the people’s attention away from the miserable, rotten, caged existence they are forced to live under those leaders—and away from their nonexistent future.