Geopolitical Weekly: Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis

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This is FREE intelligence for distribution. Forward this to your colleagues. Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis By George Friedman October 5, 2009 Two major leaks occurred this weekend over the Iran matter. In the first, The New York Times published an article reporting that staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear oversight group, had published an unreleased report saying that Iran was much more advanced in its nuclear program than the IAEA had thought previously. According to the report, Iran now has all the data needed to design a nuclear weapon. The article added that U.S. intelligence was re-examining the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007, which had stated that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. The second leak occurred in the British daily The Times, which reported that the purpose of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly publicized secret visit to Moscow on Sept. 7 was to provide the Russians with a list of Russian scientists and engineers working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The second revelation was directly tied to the first. There were many, including STRATFOR, who felt that Iran did not have the non-nuclear disciplines needed for rapid progress toward a nuclear device. Putting the two pieces together, the presence of Russian personnel in Iran would mean that the Iranians had obtained the needed expertise from the Russians. It would also mean that the Russians were not merely a factor in whether there would be effective sanctions, but over whether and when the Iranians would obtain a nuclear weapon. Read more » Related Intelligence for STRATFOR Members The Significance of Leaks About the Iranian Nuclear Issue Israel: Agreeing to Diplomacy Iran, P-5+1: An Update on the Geneva Talks Geopolitical Diary: 'Death to Russia' on the Streets of Tehran VIDEO: Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis The pageantry surrounding 60 years of Communist rule was designed to signal much-needed political unity in China, which has been challenged by a year of economic and internal crisis, STRATFOR analyst Jennifer Richmond says. Meanwhile, the Irish prepare to vote on the Lisbon Treaty. Watch the Video » DISTRIBUTION: If you did not receive this report directly from STRATFOR and would like more geopolitical & security related updates, join our free email list. If you repost this article on a website, include a link to https://www.stratfor.com/?utm_source=GWeeklyS&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091005&utm_content=repost

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