NEW ALERT ABOUT IRAN – AT 8:42 P.M. ET:  Reader Joseph J. Gallick alerts us to this report from Germany, which is spreading rapidly around the internet.  It deals with new intelligence information from Iranian defectors, and other sources:

The West has long been suspicious of Iran's nuclear program. SPIEGEL has obtained new documents on secret tests and leadership structures that call into question Tehran's claims to be exclusively interested in the peaceful use of the technology...

...The new information, say American experts, will likely prompt the US government to reassess the risks coming from the mullah-controlled country in the coming days and raise the alarm level from yellow to red. Skeptics who in the past, sometimes justifiably so, treated alarmist reports as Israeli propaganda, are also extremely worried. They include the experts from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose goal is prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

I love the little nasty comment about Israel.  If these European "sophisticates" had listened to Israeli intelligence, and indeed some Arab intelligence agencies, years go, they'd be in a much better position.

And the document that Spiegel, a German magazine, has apparently seen?

According to the classified document, there is a secret military branch of Iran's nuclear research program that answers to the Defense Ministry and has clandestine structures. The officials who have read the dossier conclude that the government in Tehran is serious about developing a bomb, and that its plans are well advanced.

This comes as no shock to anyone with common sense.  The Iranians didn't build all those plants and underground facilities because they needed power to recharge iPods.  This has been a military program from the start.

The trouble is, nothing has been done to stop it.  The sanctions applied to Iran thus far have been laughed at.  The Chinese, who have veto power in the UN Security Council, are militantly against new sanctions, and it's unlikely we could even get some European countries, with extensive commercial ties to Iran, to go along:

This leaves the military option. Apart from the political consequences and the possibility of counter-attacks, bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would be extremely difficult. The nuclear experts have literally buried themselves and their facilities underground, in locations that would be virtually impossible to reach with conventional weapons.

While even Israeli experts are skeptical over how much damage bombing the facilities could do to the nuclear program, the normally levelheaded US General David Petraeus sounded downright belligerent when asked whether the Iranian nuclear facilities could be attacked militarily. "Well, they certainly can be bombed," he said just two weeks ago in Washington.

COMMENT:  I doubt if Obama, strapped in tight by the left wing of his party, has the stomach for military action, which would have to be sustained.  That leaves the real possibility that the mullahs of Iran will have the bomb.  And if they are in danger of being overturned, they might just give it to some allies.

This is an extraordinary dangerous situation.  Some say the mullahs can be deterred, as were the Soviets.  But the Soviet Union, with all its horrors, was rational.  The leaders wanted to live.  The Iranians, with their religious fanaticism, may be more like the Japanese kamikaze.

We look to Obama, probably in vain.

January 25, 2010