BLINDNESS ON IRAN – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  As readers know, we insist on covering foreign affairs during our election campaign, in part because serious discussion of foreign policy seem to be disappearing from many media outlets.   How much discussion have you heard recently about the Iranian nuclear program?   

In the past few days we've reported that intelligence officials in the West now believe that Iran may be further along in its nuclear-weapons program than previously thought.  (Big shock.  Enemies always seem to surprise us with their abilities.  Consider Pearl Harbor or 9-11.)  Now comes an alarming statement by the Israeli defense minister:

(Reuters) - Iran's nuclear moves are becoming harder for Israeli and U.S. intelligence to assess, making Teheran's suspected atomic weapons drive an even more urgent matter, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday.

He was commenting a report in the newspaper Haaretz that said U.S. President Barack Obama had received a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) saying Iran had made significant and surprising progress toward military nuclear capability.

"There probably really is such an American intelligence report -- I don't know if it is an NIE one -- making its way around senior offices (in Washington)," Barak told Israel Radio.

"As far as we know it brings the American assessment much closer to ours ... it makes the Iranian issue even more urgent and (shows it is) less clear and certain that we will know everything in time about their steady progress toward military nuclear capability."

Israel sees an atomic armed Iran as a threat to its existence and there is persistent speculation over whether it will launch a pre-emptive military strike against the Islamic republic's nuclear facilities.

Tehran denies it is seeking to build the bomb, saying it is enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes.

Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, says little time remains before Iran achieves a "zone of immunity" in which Israeli bombs would be unable to penetrate deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities.

The United States has said it is determined to stop Iran gaining atomic weapons but has urged Israel not to launch a unilateral attack and instead to give more time for sanctions against Teheran to work.

COMMENT:  The Obama position is growing weaker and weaker.  If it turns out that Iran is much further ahead than previously thought, the credibility of our intelligence advisories goes out the window.   Indeed, several years ago, in an act many observers consider to be the injection of politics into intelligence assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003.  Now the spooks are telling us that it's further along than thought.  Would you rest the lives of your children on this stuff?

One problem is that the mindset of the Obama administration, or at least many of its members, is that an Iranian bomb is primarily an Israeli problem.  It is not.  It is primarily an American problem.  Israel is the little Satan.  The U.S. is the great Satan."  We've noted before that two nuclear devices, sailed into American harbors in the holds of freighters, and set off by suicide squads, would produce unspeakable casualties in a few seconds, and wreck the American economy.  Not enough people seem interested.  The fashion plates in Washington consider that "warmongering," when it's simply a learning of the lessons of the 20th century.

August 9, 2012