Did an Iranian Spy Clear Tehran of Nuclear Ambitions?
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says that Iran did have a nuclear weapons research program until early 2003, but then dismantled it. See Farideh Farhi’s excellent discussion of this development at our joint Global Affairs weblog. There is now a high level of confidence that Iran is no longer seeking nuclear weapons. This finding reverses numerous statements of George W. Bush to the effect that Iran is frantically trying to get a nuke. So what convinced the US intelligence community that Iran’s weapons program was long ago dismantled? A prominent Iran specialist is suggesting on a private email list that very likely, it is explained by one name: Ali Reza Asghari. Asghari had been head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in the 1980s. He is someone who knows where all the bodies are buried with regard to Iranian covert operations, from involvement in the 1983 attack on the Marines in Beirut, to the training of the Badr Corps (now back in Iraq) and any Iran links
