ANOTHER FOREIGN POLICY SUCCESS - AT 6:46 P.M. ET:  As usual, we're now learning that Iran is further ahead in nuclear weapons development than we've been officially told.  Other surprises are probably in store:

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.

The issue isn't only how far along Iran is, but whether it's working on a nuclear weapon at all.  Should we take a guess, or trust what the mullahs say?  Obviously, they would not have acquired all the information needed for a bomb unless they intended to build one.   

But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States.

Two years ago, American intelligence agencies published a detailed report concluding that Tehran halted its efforts to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. But in recent months, Britain has joined France, Germany and Israel in disputing that conclusion, saying the work has been resumed.

The American "report" was, in the eyes of many knowledgeable observers, disgraceful, and driven by a political agenda.  But mainstream journalism ate it up at the time as a means of embarrassing President Bush.

A senior American official said last week that the United States was now re-evaluating its 2007 conclusions.

I would hope so.

The new deadline for Iran to make visible progress in dismantling its weapons program is apparently December, unless President Obama has something more important to do.  We'll see if this deadline, unlike all the others, holds.

October 3, 2009