Lost Innocence

WSJ:

More worrying is what the IAEA delicately calls the "possible military dimensions" of Iran's programs. Given that Iran insists its nuclear drive is for peaceful purposes only, it's interesting to note "the fact that substantial parts of the centrifuge components were manufactured in the workshops of the Defense Industries Organization.

Also interesting is what the report describes as "the development of high voltage detonator firing equipment and exploding bridgewire (EBW) detonators including, inter alia, the simultaneous firing of multiple EBW detonators, an underground testing arrangement . . . and the testing of at least one full scale hemispherical, converging, explosively driven shock system that could be applicable to an implosion-type nuclear device." If there's an innocent explanation for this kind of work, we'd love to hear it.

The report notes in an annex that some of these weaponization experiments took place in 2004. This means the Iranians continued to work on weaponization well after the December U.S. National Intelligence Estimate claimed they had abandoned them. That estimate has already been discredited for suggesting that uranium enrichment and ballistic-missile development fall outside the definition of a "nuclear weapons program." But now it seems this U.S. intelligence "consensus" was wrong even on its own misleadingly narrow terms.

I like this idea:

A month-long naval blockade of Iran's imports of refined gasoline – which accounts for nearly half of its domestic consumption – could clarify for the Iranians just how unacceptable their nuclear program is to the civilized world.