Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

“Political isolation is something the Iranians are very much concerned about,” said Thomas Pickering, who served as undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, arguing that continued diplomacy gave the U.S. the leverage of presenting Iran with a united coalition.

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolutionary capture of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. But instead of the typical anti-American protests, the Iranian dissidents are clashing with regime forces. The Wall Street Journal:
The scale of the opposition protests — and the government crackdown — was unclear early Wednesday, but wire services and state-controlled media [...]

According to diplomats interviewed by The New York Times, Iran isn’t actually sending mixed messages on the deal reached in Vienna to process Iranian uranium outside the country and thereby put a year back on the clock counting down until Iran is likely to develop a nuclear bomb. It’s rejected the guts of the deal: [...]

Whether it’s the one the United States, France, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency are offering is a different story. But the Iranian “president” has told state TV, in advance of a formal response expected to come Friday, that the basis for cooperation on the nuclear question is in place. The New York Times:
“Fortunately, [...]

Earlier today, Iran sentenced Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American academic, to 12 years in prison for the “crime” of assisting the dissidents in anti-regime protests earlier this year. The AP reports that Tajbakhsh’s sentence is the “longest prison term yet in a mass trial of more than 100 opposition figures, activists and journalists” since the June [...]

Just out from the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee:
“If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability, it would pose a significant threat to peace and security in the Middle East, especially to our close ally Israel,” said Dodd. “That is a threat to both national security and global stability – and it cannot be [...]

More from the “size and configuration” files regarding Iran’s heretofore-concealed nuclear facility at Qom. You’ll recall on Friday the Obama administration stated in a background briefing for reporters that it believed Qom was “designed to hold about 3,000 centrifuge machines.” That was a key piece of evidence for the case that the facility is probably [...]

Something I couldn’t fit into my piece yesterday: Ivan Oelrich, the acting president of the Federation for American Scientists, weighs in on what President Obama meant when he said the “configuration” of Iran’s hidden Qom nuclear facility made it incompatible with a peaceful nuclear power program. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International [...]

Here’s a perfect example of why President Obama didn’t want to be locked into saying that Iran’s heretofore-undisclosed nuclear facility has violated international law. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just delivered this statement to the press in Manhattan:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his country has complied with rules of the U.N. nuclear agency which require that it is [...]

I don’t have any more yet, but the early speculation on the cable networks is that Iran’s very belated disclosure of its nuclear facility under construction near Qom came after western intelligence services closed in on the structure. Less than five years ago, the Silberman-Robb commission on WMD intelligence castigated the U.S. intelligence community for [...]