Right Wing Nut House

According to the Sunday Times of London, a senior Israeli intelligence official has recently briefed Washington on the possibility that Iran is much farther along in developing nuclear weapons than previously believed:

The attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, came as it emerged that the head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, secretly discussed the nuclear programme with officials in Washington last week.

Meir Dagan, the Mossad chief, is believed to have passed on the latest Israeli intelligence on covert Iranian plans for enriching uranium, with a warning that Tehran may be nearer to acquiring nuclear weapons than widely believed.

[...]

Dagan, a stocky former commando who was injured in the 1967 six-day war, was sent to Washington by Olmert, the victor of last month’s Israeli elections, to prepare the way for his own visit to the White House on May 23. The Mossad boss is thought to have held meetings with counterparts at the CIA, the Pentagon and national security council. “Dagan is not given to small talk and niceties,” said an Israeli intelligence source, who believes he told the Americans: “This is what we know and this is what we’ll do if you continue to do nothing.”

The Washington Times reports on the meeting with Dagan and quotes Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who appears to be the only world leader willing to stand up and tell the truth about the fanatical Iranian leader President Ahmadinejad:

Mr. Olmert, in a weekend interview with the German newspaper Bild, denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in some of the strongest language yet heard from an Israeli leader.

“Ahmadinejad talks today like Hitler spoke before seizing power,” Mr. Olmert was quoted as saying. “We are dealing with a psychopath of the worst kind, with an anti-Semite. God forbid this man from ever getting his hands on nuclear weapons.”

Olmert misspoke. Hitler spoke about Czechoslovakia exactly the same way that Ahmadinejad talks about Israel after he seized power. In fact, not since Der Fuhrer was giving his impassioned orations dripping with venom against his faux enemies before his henchmen in the Reichstag has a leader of a major power talked about wiping a country “off the map.” Clearly, the Israelis are worried.

But how significant is it that the head of the Mossad would come to Washington to brief the CIA about an accelerated Iranian nuke program?

The fact that we haven’t had any leaks about this meeting prior to this weekend probably means that it strengthens the President’s case and weakens the case of his detractors. I’m sorry for sounding so cynical but the culture of leaking at the CIA would almost by definition mean that if Mossad was telling the CIA something at odds with what the White House had been saying, it would have been in print at either the New York Times or the Washington Post within a couple of days. The fact that this leak appeared in the Sunday Times and was apparently from the Mossad and not the CIA is also significant.

As far as its significance to our Iran policy, it should add more urgency to an already urgent cause. We are far from running out of diplomatic options, but before any peaceful solution can be found, the revelations by the Israelis (which dovetail with other reports leaked from the IAEA regarding Iraqi centrifuge upgrades) should require us to at the very least insist upon full disclosure by the Iranians of their entire nuclear program, including any military parts that we believe are active. This “two track” nuclear program was almost dismissed in the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear capability that came to light last summer. Perhaps its time for our clueless spooks to take another long, hard look at that aspect of the Iranian program.

We need a little more urgency in our negotiations with the Europeans as well as trying to shake the Russians and the Chinese to stop their obstructionist policies and get on the sanctions bandwagon. It may be time to name a special emissary of some kind who could work full time on these issues.

Too bad we’re sending James Baker to Iraq…