I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO HEAR THIS - AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  We keep cautioning here at Urgent Agenda that we're taking our eye off foreign policy during the raging debate on health care, but the threats are building.  Those who we're supposed to depend on in the "international community" are, surprise, disappointing us:

The world's nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran's drive to obtain nuclear arms, senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials told Haaretz.

The officials and diplomats said that the International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.

ElBaradei, who will soon vacate his post, has said that the agency does not have any evidence that suggests Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

But the sources told Haaretz that the new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in the Islamic Republic. The report was said to have been signed by the head of the IAEA team in Iran.

The classified report, according to the sources, was not incorporated into the agency's published reports. The details, they said, were censored by senior officials of the IAEA in the organization's Vienna headquarters.

COMMENT:  Great, huh?  ElBaradei reflects the twisted idea that the real problem isn't the Iranian nuclear program, but, rather, our worry about it.  We must stop these hotheaded Yankees from being concerned about their own survival.  How narrow.  How unsophisticated.  This is an idea that is actually spreading, an idea that holds that we must learn to live with the Iranian bomb, just as we lived with the Soviet bomb.  Problem is, the Soviet Union wasn't run by suicidal religious zealots for whom martyrdom is welcomed. 

There is new pressure on the IAEA to release its classified reports on Iran in the fall.  I'm not betting on it.

August 19, 2009