Political Skullduggery

It just wouldn't feel like a normal workday without a good dose (or two or three...) of anti-Iran info-op nuggets.

Of all the claims that Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they are planning to confront Tehran about it this week.

The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret program--based on the black market offerings of the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan--separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.

Suspicions arose because inspectors knew that Dr. Khan had supplied Libya and North Korea with actual P-2 centrifuges in the late 1990's, and they repeatedly heard that he had done likewise with Iran.

B. S .A. Tahir, the chief operating officer of the Khan network, now in prison in Malaysia, has reportedly said that Iran received far more P-2 technology than it has admitted and that some shipments took place after Dr. Khan and the Iranians supposedly ceased doing business around 1995.

The "mushroom cloud" scenario is usually a winning hand when trying to scare people into going along with a political or military initiative, but there are additional strategems in play today.

We need to work Iran's support of terrorists into the conversation. Who have been the poster boys for the public face of terrorism since the 1960's?

Iran said Sunday that it would give $50 million in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government after the United States and the European Union froze financing.

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, announced the donation on the last day of a pro-Palestinian conference.

"We warn that if the aid is cut and if this continues in the near future," the Palestinians "will witness a humanitarian disaster and the occupiers and their supporters will be responsible," Mr. Mottaki said, referring to Israel.

Today's tour de force concludes with the scary revelation that the freedom hating Islamic Republic of Iran did not celebrate Easter with an official Easter egg hunt. But they are hunting for spare parts for the then-advanced weaponry they purchased from the U.S. during the Shah era.

Over the past two years, arms dealers have exported or attempted to export to Iran experimental aircraft; machines used for measuring the strength of steel, which is critical in the development of nuclear weapons; assembly kits for F-14 Tomcat fighter jets; and a range of components used in missile systems and fighter-jet engines.

"Iran's weapons acquisition program is becoming more organized," said Stephen Bogni, acting chief of the Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "They are looking for more varied and sophisticated technology. Night-vision equipment, unmanned aircraft, missile technology" and weapons of mass destruction...

Since 2002, there have been 17 major cases involving the illegal shipment of weapons technology to Iran, outpacing the 15 cases involving China, the other main nation seeking U.S. military goods, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2000, the U.S. government has instituted 800 export investigations involving Iran.

Although arms dealers work nationwide, many of the Iranian cases have connections to Southern California, which remains a center for aeronautics and is home to the biggest concentration of Iranians outside of Tehran. Some neighborhoods of Los Angeles, such as Brentwood on the west side and parts of the San Fernando Valley, are jokingly referred to as "Irangeles."

Federal agents said the main method for obtaining U.S. technology is not through espionage but through simple business deals. "We're not talking about 007 running around trying to steal these parts," Bogni said. "We're talking about the Iranian government putting out shopping lists to brokers and greedy businessmen."

I've known my share of greedy businessmen, but I doubt that even any of them would actually sell weapons of mass destruction to Iran. Methinks the boys in the psy-op shop may have overdone it a bit with that extraneous detail.