Its Not The Size Of Your Cascade That Counts...

Its what you do with it.

Sean-Paul Kelley at The Agonist points me to the latest bit of fearmongering from Brian Ross at ABC's Blotter.

Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material.

The development means Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade tell ABC News.

The sources say the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran's nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground.

..."If they continue at this pace, and they get the centrifuges to work and actually enrich uranium on a distinct basis," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, "then you're looking at them having, potentially having enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 2009."

Previous predictions by U.S. intelligence had cited 2015 as the earliest date Iran could develop a weapon.

Want to know why US intelligence has the later date? Because David Albright, among others, tells them so. Albright has always been one of the more doom-sayer nuclear analysts when it comes to Iran, but even he is careful to say everything depends on what Iran does with its centifuges once it has them installed.

Here's a segment of a post from another nuclear expert, Jeffrey Lewis, from one week ago.

Public accounts of IAEA findings suggest Iran continues to find such challenges are far from trivial. An IAEA report that argued that Iran continues to have difficulty understanding the relationship between UF6 gas flow, temperature and stress corrosion. A “Western Intelligence official” explained to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in September 2006 that “The Iranians are unable to control higher temperatures, and after a short period they must stop because of higher temperatures. So far they haven’t been able to solve this.” The official added that some centrifuges “are simply crashing—10 or so have broken down and must be replaced.”10

Indeed, the other estimate that Chubin cites, by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security, states quite clearly that their estimate “reflects a worst-case assessment” adding that “Iran can be expected to take longer”:

Iran is likely to encounter technical difficulties that would delay bringing a centrifuge plant into operation. Factors causing delay include Iran having trouble in the installation of so many centrifuges in such a short time period, or Iran taking longer than expected to overcome difficulties in operating the cascades as a single production unit or commissioning the secret centrifuge plant.11

Albright and Hinderstein do not, as one might have supposed from Chubin’s description, minimize the impact of these technical hurdles. Indeed, in subsequent reports, Albright, writing with Jacqueline Shire, has noted that Iran has made “limited progress at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, installing and operating fewer gas centrifuges than expected. Senior Vienna-based diplomats have confirmed to ISIS that Iran may be either delaying deliberately the pace of its work while diplomatic efforts are underway, or is experiencing technical problems with its centrifuge program.”12

Such technical troubles, revealed by international nuclear inspections, appear to have influenced the conclusion of the May 2005 memo to holders that Iran remains five to ten years from building a nuclear device.

Recent public statements suggest that a new forthcoming NIE on Iran’s nuclear program will not significantly alter this estimate.13 This is not to say that Iran is not making progress toward mastering enrichment, but merely that time remains for diplomacy.

You can get the links to all the numbered references in the above segment from Lewis's original post. But now you see why Brian Ross couldn't get an IAEA spokesman or US intelligence oficial to go on the record about this bit of neo-puff, even anonymously.

But if ABC's source isn't the IAEA or US intelligence, who could "sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade" be? It is a crucial question. As Sean Paul says:

the article has one source, and one source alone that says an Iranian nuke could be possible by 2009. And what does this one source base this completely unrealistic claim on? 1,000 new centrifuges Iran is installing at Natanz, which the articles notes, are not even operational.

The other obvious suspect is the political wing of the utterly-nutterly anti-Iranian terror group the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq. Their political front organisation, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, been responsible for a vast amount of the so-called "intelligence" on Iran's nuclear program that has been touted over the last few years - and most of it has been found to be bogus when investigated by the IAEA.

So come on Brian Ross, come clean - are you shilling for an Islamist/Marxist terror group that has killed US citizens, wants it's messianic leader to be the new absolute ruler of Iran and has cozied up to neoconservative warmongers in the US to try to make sure any regime change by the US works in its favor?

Update Glenn Greenwald picks up on Sean-Paul's post and voices more scepticism as well as noting that ABC's report wouldn't pass editorial muster at most other media outlets.

When I first read that report last night, I assumed it was some sort of preliminary or summary blog version of what the real report would be. The entire report was completely sketchy: attributed only to "sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade" -- nothing more specific -- and was unaccompanied by any corroborating information or any way to assess the veracity or credibility of the claims. It just seemed inconceivable that such an obviously significant claim would be emphatically advanced by ABC News with such skimpy information and using such shoddy methods.

Yet it is now the following day. The article has provoked the predictable reaction. And President Bush was asked about the report today during his press conference, where the questioner specifically stated that ABC News has reported that Iran may have a nuclear bomb by 2009 (transcript will be posted when available). That is now a claim that is being treated as credible, because it has the stamp of ABC News on it, and it has now been injected into the public debate over what to do about Iran.

But the report is worthless and a complete violation of basic journalistic standards. It provides no information whatsoever about the "sources" -- are they government sources, private individuals, intelligence operatives, Iranian, American or from some other nation, people with a discernible agenda or bias? The ABC News report provides no information whatsoever. What possible excuse is there for that? And why would a report attributed exclusively to a term so vague as to be impoverished of any meaning -- "sources" -- be the slightest bit credible or even worthy of publication?

...The lesson the media supposedly learned from their shameful participation in the pre-war Iraq deceit was that they would be far more scrupulous with the use of anonymous sources -- especially when it comes to claims that can be exploited to start new wars. As I noted previously, both The New York Times and Washington Post have promulgated guidelines for the use of anonymous sources, and this ABC News report violated several of the key safeguards (I was unable to find any ABC News policy on anonymous sources).

...This ABC News article is almost like a stand-alone museum for the irresponsible journalistic practices that led us into Iraq and which have severely eroded the credibility of our national press. It is extremely inflammatory yet has no journalistic value because there is no way even to begin to assess its reliability. There have been some visible efforts by the national press as it reports on Iran to avoid the mistakes they made prior to the invasion of Iraq, but this ABC News report would stand out for journalistic recklessness even if we were back in the peak of the Government Worshipping Press Era of 2002. Those who want to argue that nothing has changed since then have been given a potent weapon by Ross and Isham.

As I've written before, nothing has changed except the subject of the shill. Iran instead of Iraq. The corporate media are too scared of losing their precious "access" to dream of really challenging the narrative...again.