Iran's hidden nuclear facility: What we know

The so-called P5+1 countries have threatened that their 'patience is running out' with regards to Iran's nuclear program.

The big news of the day will obviously be the revelation that Iran built a secret uranium enrichment facility.

U.S. officials say the facility is still under construction, that no nuclear material has been introduced to the site, and that it can hold about 3,000 centrifuges (making it much smaller than the primary enrichment facility at Natanz).

There will be a lot of speculation about this news over the next few days, and most of it will be just that, speculation. Everyone is working off a very limited pool of information provided by Western intelligence agencies (and filtered through political bureaucracies). With that caveat in mind, here are three points that jump to mind.

From a legal standpoint, this might not really be a "secret" facility. That's because Iran is required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to report facilities at least six months before it introduces nuclear material into those facilities. And there are no indications that Iran is actively enriching uranium here -- or plans to in the near future. So Iran might well be within its NPT obligations.
Legality aside, Iran has established a clear pattern of lying to the IAEA. The New York Times sums it up well in its report.

"They have cheated three times," one senior administration official with access to the intelligence said of the Iranians late on Thursday evening. "And they have now been caught three times."

The first time was the revelation that Iran was enriching uranium at Natanz; the second was the discovery, in 2007, that Iran had tried to design a nuclear warhead.

Any one of those "cheats," individually, would be cause for concern. All three of them? That's a pattern.
If you live in the U.S., get ready for a John Bolton media blitz. I'm sure he'll be on all the cable networks today talking about how this development proves we need to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

Please don't listen to him. (You shouldn't ever listen to him, but today, especially, ignore him.) The "P5+1" countries should go ahead with engagement; Obama said during a brief press conference this morning that he expects Iran to respond by Oct. 1.

If Iran doesn't offer a substantive response, today's news makes it more likely that the full Security Council will agree to tougher sanctions. Russia's already on board, as we reported yesterday, and this latest development makes it hard for China to be the lone holdout. As Juan Cole notes, China doesn't like getting in the way of the U.S. and U.K.

Obama, along with British prime minister Gordon Brown and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, just held a brief press conference. Details on that to come soon.

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