Many folks have commented on this sensational story in Sunday's London Times, which describes in great detail a daring Israeli raid on a secret Syrian nuclear facility. I have more questions than answers at this point, but I remain very skeptical. Others have already poured cold water on the story, but Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported Tuesday—very carefully, you might observe—that some American officials apparently believe that Israeli jets attacked "a site that Israel believed to be associated with a rudimentary Syrian nuclear program." As Mazzetti and Cooper note, the sudden postponement of the six-party talks with North Korea remains a mystery, but it could be tied to tensions over this alleged incident.

A few months back, I blogged about a story by Wired's Matthew Cole, who reported that Google Earth offers telling hints as to where U.S. intelligence agencies choose to direct satellite resources:

After Google recently updated its satellite images of parts of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, much of the region still looked blotchy — the kind of low resolution that persists in coverage of, say, upstate New York. But several small squares (they stand out as off-color patches from 680 miles up) suddenly became as detailed as the images of Manhattan. These sectors happen to be precisely where the US govern­ment has been hunting for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Turns out, Google gets its images from many of the same satellite companies — DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics, and others-that provide reconnaissance to US intelligence agencies. And when the CIA requests close-ups of the area around Peshawar in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, Google Earth reaps the benefits (although usually six to 18 months later).

Remembering this, I set out to discover if there happened to be any high-resolution images on Google Earth around the area where the Israeli air strikes reportedly took place. The London Times story purported to offer some clues:

An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way. [...] The target was identified as a northern Syrian facility that purported to be an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river.

Following this description takes you to al-Mayadin, a Syrian town along the Euphrates river and roughly 50 miles from the Iraqi border. Here's what the area looks like on Google Earth:

There are a couple things to note about the above image. One, it certainly doesn't look like the green banks of the Euphrates are desert, though CNN quoted "sources in the region and the United States" as saying that the air strikes "left a big hole in the desert." Two, the image is not, you may have noticed, very high resolution. (Nor are the areas around it, in case you're wondering.) Contrast blurry al-Mayadin and environs with this shot of Natanz, Iran's once-secret uranium processing facility:

If U.S. intelligence agencies had suspected nuclear activities near al-Mayadin, Cole's reporting suggests that we'd see high-res pictures in Google Earth. But that does not appear to be the case. I can think of several possible explanations:

• I made a mistake.
• Cole is wrong about Google Earth and satellite reconnaissance, or he's right about Pakistan but the formula doesn't apply elsewhere.
• U.S. intelligence agencies have been looking around al-Mayadin, but Google Earth hasn't gotten the hand-me-down imagery yet.
• Israeli intelligence on Syria's nuclear program is better than U.S. intelligence.
• The Israelis made a mistake.
• The London Times story is somehow wrong or false.

What do you think?

MICHAEL URBAN/AFP/Getty Images

The French and the Germans have cooperated on many fronts since the end of World War II. Their partnership is largely credited with driving economic growth in Europe, and both countries champion further European integration. Now, French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to take the relationship to a whole new level.

According to a report in Der Spiegel, Sarkozy, in a recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, asked if Germany would be interested in some French nuclear weapons. Der Spiegel explains the German reaction thusly:

Both the chancellor and her foreign minister were speechless. The idea of possessing nuclear weapons is taboo in Germany. Sarzoky's predecessor Jacques Chirac cautiously brought up the issue 12 years ago, but he quickly realized it was pointless to pursue it.

Steinmeier eventually explained that as Germany had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; it wasn't interested in French nukes. Merkel said nothing. 

Sarkozy's offer is the latest in a series of odd incidents between the French and the Germans. For instance, Sarkozy asked Merkel to force German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück to publicly apologize for contradicting the French president at an EU meeting over the independence of the Central European Bank. Merkel told Sarkozy she couldn't reprimand Steinbrück, as he was articulating German policy. 

Disputes over more substantive issues like Iraq have also emerged. The Germans were miffed when French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner visited Baghdad recently to express support for U.S. policy. Berlin was also upset by France's nuclear agreement with Libya. Both were done without consultation.

What does this new dynamic between France and Germany mean for the rest of Europe? Der Speigel says it best: "It's possible that Europe's legendary Franco-German motor might shift into neutral for a while."

Something didn't smell quite right in Glenn Kessler's recent story in the Washington Post about a possible nuclear link between North Korea and Syria. It looked to me like déjà vu all over again. So I asked Joseph Cirincione, senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, and a frequent FP contributor, to weigh in. Here's his take:

This story is nonsense. The Washington Post story should have been headlined "White House Officials Try to Push North Korea-Syria Connection." This is a political story, not a threat story. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from the run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad commentary on how selective leaks from administration officials who have repeatedly misled the press are still treated as if they were absolute truth.

Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted "intelligence" to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria.

Few reporters appear to have done even basic investigation of the miniscule Syrian nuclear program (though this seems to be filtering into some stories running Friday). There is a reason that Syria is not included in most proliferation studies, including mine: It doesn't amount to much. Begun almost 40 years ago, the Syrian program is a rudimentary research program built around a tiny 30-kilowatt research reactor that produces isotopes and neutrons. It is nowhere near a program for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel. Over a dozen countries have aided the program including Belgium, Germany, Russia, China, and the United States (where several Syrian scientists trained) as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). If North Korea gave them anything short of nuclear weapons it is of little consequence. Syria does not have the financial, technical or industrial base to develop a serious nuclear program anytime in the foreseeable future.

Nor is there anything new about Syria being on the U.S. "watch list"; it has been for years. Unfortunately, this misleading story will now enter the lexicon of the far right. For months we will hear pundits citing the "Syrian-Iranian-Korean nuclear axis" and complaining that attempts to negotiate an end to North Korea's program are bound fail in the face of such duplicity, etc., etc.

The real story is how quickly the New York Times and the Washington Post snapped up the bait and ran exactly the story the officials wanted, thereby feeding a mini-media frenzy. It appears that nothing, not even a disastrous and unnecessary war, can break this Pavlovian response to an "intelligence scoop."

For information on the Syrian nuclear program that any reporter should have read, see the Web site of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

UPDATE: Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler responds via e-mail:

I think the world of Joe Cirincione. So I obviously take his concerns seriously.

All I can say in response is that I (and a number of uncredited colleagues) spent more than week knocking on doors of many agencies, seeking answers. No one tried to wave us off the story, including people who normally I thought would have tried their best to prevent us from printing it. I did note a number of caveats and explained that Syria never had much of a nuclear program. There appears to be a connection to the Israeli raid, which is now the subject of some of the tightest censorship in years. We will keep pursuing the story in hopes of providing greater clarity for our readers--and especially experts like Joe.

... more here from Kessler, who reports that the State Department's Chris Hill doesn't expect negotiations with North Korea to be derailed by this.

PAUL CROCK/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, the Pentagon admitted that a B-52 had mistakenly flown nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the United States. And worse, for almost fourteen hours no one—at the base of departure, on the bomber itself, or at the base of arrival—had any idea something was wrong. Officials have assured the public that there was no danger of a nuclear explosion, even if the plane had crashed.

The specific warheads carried by U.S. cruise missiles belong to the W80 family, in this case the W80-1. (Other versions of the W80 are designed for use with Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are launched from submarines.) There are about 1,450 of these warheads in the active stockpile, with another 360 or so in the inactive stockpile. They have "dialable" (variable) yields of up to 150 kilotons, or about 10 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. And, as mentioned by the Pentagon, they have several safety measures built in to prevent accidental detonation.

First, the actual detonation system is physically protected by an "exclusion zone," which isolates it from electric (and to some extent physical) shocks. The exclusion zone can be connected to the rest of the warhead’s electronics by a "strong link," which does not physically connect until the warhead is armed.

An accident—fire, lighting strike, crash, etc.—could breach either or both of these safeguards, so the electronics inside the exclusion zone also contain safeguards, called "weak links." These are electronic links designed to fail under lower stress than either the exclusion zone or the strong link. This ensures that, for instance, if the exclusion zone collapses, the weak links will as well and the nuclear core will remain inert.

And beyond those nested safety systems, most U.S. warheads have other safeguards, including insensitive high explosives that will not detonate easily due to mechanical shock. The biggest worry with this incident was not technical, but organizational: How did nuclear warheads get loaded onto a plane and flown across the country before anyone even noticed they were gone?

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a new agreement this week called Understandings of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA on the Modalities of Resolution of the Outstanding Issues (pdf). "Outstanding Issues" refers to the handful of past and current issues with Iran's nuclear program that the IAEA has not been able to resolve to its satisfaction.

Essentially, the agreement lays out a logical order for addressing these issues and begins to set a timetable for doing so. The IAEA is to submit all outstanding questions in writing by September 15, 2007, and Iran will then respond to each in a defined sequence.

The agreement is a mixed bag, from a U.S. perspective. On the upside, the IAEA appears to have resolved its outstanding questions on Iran's plutonium experiments, the first such resolution in four years. And clarifying publicly the issues that remain to be addressed, as well as setting out which should be resolved first, will be helpful as the diplomatic process moves forward.

But the agreement also has its downsides, some of which David Albright and Jacqueline Shire of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) pointed out (pdf) yesterday. They worry that the text's reference to "closing files" could block reconsideration of crucial issues, if new information came to light after a particular issue was "closed." Albright and Shire also note that the timetable for the process has been drawn out at least until late 2007, and possibly even to early 2008.

However, ISIS's press release does not mention a worrisome undercurrent running through the entire agreement. Basically, Iran is putting the burden of proof on the IAEA to show that its nuclear activities are not peaceful. The underfunded, understaffed Agency would benefit greatly from a political push to reverse this state of affairs; member states themselves should be responsible for providing such proof.

A recent report by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center suggests one way of achieving this: "country-neutral" rules regarding noncompliance, which would go into effect automatically if the IAEA cannot reach consensus on the compliance of a suspected proliferator. Such rules would trigger certain consequences if consensus is not reached, regardless of the country being scrutinized, and would give much stronger incentives for countries like Iran to actively work at dispelling worries about their nuclear programs. If this role reversal could be achieved, Iran and its ilk would have much more difficulty buying time or avoiding sanctions by manipulating the IAEA.

A few months ago, I predicted the U.S.-India nuclear deal would "mutate, but move forward, in the coming months." With negotiations between the United States and India completed and a draft agreement released, mutated may be too mild a description of its policy shifts.

RAVEENDRAN/AFP

According to Sharon Squassoni of the Carnegie Endowment, "As far as I can tell, the U.S. caved to all the Indian demands."

Among other things, the United States agreed that if it ever recalled its nuclear technology, it would reimburse India for the "fair market value thereof and for the costs incurred as a consequence of such removal." So if India tested a nuclear weapon and the U.S. government terminated cooperation—as required under U.S. law—and demanded its stuff back, American taxpayers would have to pay India for the privilege.

The U.S. Congress, which must approve the deal before it can go forward, still seems interested, but has so far reacted cautiously. As expected, Pakistan has expressed strong displeasure, citing a "nuclear arms race in the region" as one possible outcome of the deal. But goodwill toward Pakistan is at an ebb in Washington, and the U.S. administration brushed this claim aside.

In fact, it may be in India where the critics are loudest. There, opposition to the deal is wide-ranging, based on nonproliferation concerns as well as national sovereignty; coming from the Left parties as well as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which controlled the government when India tested nuclear weapons in 1998. So it's no surprise that on Monday, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed India's parliament on the deal, he faced a maelstrom of anger.

So why is this tortured agreement still moving forward? Aside from the oft-mentioned strategic concerns (grand alliance of democracies, counterbalance China, etc), the business communities in both countries have been lobbying hard for the deal. According to the U.S.-India Business Council, the planned expansion of India's civilian nuclear industry could generate $150 billion in commercial opportunities for U.S. companies. And India's third-biggest electric provider, Tata Power, has already lined up "major nuclear equipment suppliers and is ready to go." Remember Ike's famous warning about the danger posed by the military-industrial complex? Perhaps he was on to something.

MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/Getty Images

France's chattering classes are agog at l'audace of Nicolas Sarkozy, who sent his wife Cécilia to Libya earlier this week. Cécilia flew to Tripoli to secure the dramatic release of five Bulgarian nurses in a deal that, in truth, had already been all but inked by more publicity-shy EU and Bulgarian negotiators. Back in 2006, the Bulgarians, the Libyans, and the European Union set up a fund for over 400 Libyan kids who had been infected with HIV. That was the vehicle through which this deal eventually worked, but Cécilia is getting most of the credit for her last-minute involvement. Miffed EU officials have, understandably, grumbled to the press about how the Sarkozys are stealing their diplomatic triumph.

But the French are actually getting away with more than mere publicity here. French companies are wasting no time cutting deals with the Libyans in the defense, oil, gas, and civilian nuclear sectors, with more likely on the way.

So what does Libya get? The nurses' harrowing tales of their internment certainly give Libyan jails a black eye, but the regime is getting the international recognition and investment it has long craved. No domestic reform necessary. Thus, the real long-term winner of Libya's euros-for-hostages deal may be not Sarkozy, but Seif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, the Western-educated son of the Libyan leader who was heavily involved in the negotiations over the Bulgarian nurses. You can bet that Seif is going to take his share of the proceeds, and that Libya's heir apparent has advanced his claim to the throne with this coup.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

"All parts of [our] centrifuges are built in Iran," said an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday. If true, it's depressing news. Some analysts argue that the Iranians are having trouble enriching uranium because they can't import the right spare parts.

On the other hand, Khamenei might just be blowing smoke. The Iranians say they can make all the parts, but that doesn't mean they can make all the parts well. They're still feeding uranium into the assembled centrifuges slowly, which could indicate worries about operating them at high speeds. And the centrifuges are not being spun at full capacity, either.

Most likely, the Supreme Leader wants to instill doubt in the Security Council that new, targeted sanctions would be effective. Khamenei's assertion—combined with a few other recent Iranian maneuvers—could delay Security Council action, at the least. At worst, it could splinter support among the permanent five and entirely derail the possibility of further action.

Few people have noted two other interesting tidbits in Iran's announcement. First, it was an advisor to Supreme Leader Khamenei, not President Ahmadinejad, who made the statement. Rumor has it Khamenei thought Ahmadinejad was going too far in his rhetoric towards the West about Iran's nuclear program. With Khamenei's advisor now making aggressive statements in support of the nuclear program, perhaps the Supreme Leader has decided to adopt a confrontational approach more like that of Ahmadinejad.

Second, Khamenei's news may have caused crude oil prices to rally earlier this week. Iranians are increasingly unhappy with their country's deteriorating economy, and violent unrest followed the government's recent decision to ration gasoline. Khamenei may be trying to manipulate the oil markets, hoping to alleviate domestic pressure. Given how fickle oil markets can be, this might be an encouraging sign of just how desperate the Iranian regime has become.

MIKE CLARKE/AFP

After many, many fits and starts, North Korea reportedly got its $25 million in frozen funds back today. Banco Delta Asia released the money to a undisclosed location, possibly a Russian bank. 

The apparent issue holding up the transfer was that the North Koreans didn't want the United States to simply wire them the money; they wanted a private bank to handle the funds in order to confer a sense of legitimacy on the country's accounts. But no bank would take the reputational risk involved in passing along cash that could be tied to drugs or money laundering.

One thing the North Koreans will soon find out, however: Resolution of the $25 million won't end the country's financial isolation. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Wall Street Journal recently:

Once one of these -- once you are -- your accounts are called out this way in the international financial system, the international financial system is not readily available.

This is a problem for the international community as well as North Korea, however. Kim Jong Il's regime engages in nasty illegal activities not for the heck of it, but to make up for an estimated $1.7 billion shortfall (pdf) in hard currency. Now that the nuclear deal appears to be going forward, serious effort needs to be made to help the North Koreans understand that there are other ways to make a buck.

SAMUEL KUBANI/AFP

Last week, the New York Times reported that Iran "appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before." The article now reads like a preview of what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei will likely tell the U.N. Security Council tomorrow in New York: that Iran already possesses "the knowledge about how to enrich," and that therefore trying to convince Iran to comply with U.N. resolutions and suspend its enrichment program is pointless. ElBaradei's remarks quoted in the Times have provoked the ire of United States and the EU3, so the findings on which they are based bear close scrutiny. 

According to the Times, the IAEA found that the Natanz plant has "roughly 1,300" centrifuges, all of which "were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors." A few months ago, I noted that Iran was probably running fewer than 500 centrifuges, with perhaps another 300 installed, so 1,300 would represent a significant gain.

However, the Iranians failed to meet their goal of having 3,000 centrifuges installed by March. David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, thinks they could achieve that number by the end of June, though at the rate they've been going the Iranians would not achieve it until September.

Also, the Times article says nothing about Iran's ability to machine centrifuge parts, or about Iran's ability to produce sufficiently pure gas to feed into the centrifuges, or about whether the existing centrifuge cascades are linked together—a necessary step to produce useful levels of enrichment—or about whether the cascades can operate continuously. (The inspection, while performed at very short notice, might have just caught the Iranians on a good day).

So, in short: Take reports about Iran's capabilities with a grain of salt, and listen carefully to tomorrow's report from ElBaradei. Iran still has a ways to go before it can produce significant quantities of its own nuclear weapons-grade uranium. As Jeffrey Lewis observed last week, there's an important distinction between "knowing how to enrich and perfecting that knowledge," and it's over that ground that the next diplomatic battle will be waged.

Back in April, amid speculation that Vice President Dick Cheney had lost influence within the Bush administration, I wrote of the North Korea deal:

Cheney, like Richard Perle and John Bolton, thinks the North Korea deal will ultimately fail. If and when it does, he'll be vindicated. That's why he let it go through.

Well, here comes former Ambassador to the U.N. Bolton with a big, fat, "I told you so" column in today's Wall Street Journal. Writing a day after a historic train ride between the two Koreas, Bolton crows:

Over a month has passed since sweetness and light were due to break out on the Korean Peninsula. On Feb. 13, the Six-Party Talks in Beijing ratified a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and North Korea, providing for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs. The first step, 60 days after ratification, was to be that North Korea "will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment" the Yongbyon nuclear facility, and readmit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Other steps were to follow, but the first move was unequivocally to be made by Pyongyang. The 60 days came and went, and indeed, another 35 days have come and gone. No IAEA inspectors have been readmitted, and not even Pyongyang claims that it has "shut down" Yongbyon.

I'm not ready to declare the deal a failure just yet. But you can expect Cheney to do so, and to use the situation to his advantage on other fronts—such as Iran, where he's been losing the policy fight to the State Department of late. (Witness the upcoming bilateral talks on Iraq between the United States and Iran.) Bolton hints at next steps in his piece:

How these issues play out will have ramifications far beyond North Korea, particularly for Iran.

Indeed they will. Cheney has hinted darkly that the United States may have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, if only because Israel will do so on its own. Incidentally, 71 percent of Israelis "believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program." Military action is not necessarily on the table—few in Washington think that, at least for now. We might just see a more confrontational approach to Tehran, tighter sanctions, less willingness to offer incentives, etc. The point is, if you think the hawks have completely lost this argument, think again. Of course, if U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill manages to get the North Korea deal back on track, Iran will then be State's game to lose.

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP

After a week of deadlock, the standoff at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting was resolved Tuesday … by a footnote. Iran had balked at a phrase in the agenda stressing the "need for full compliance with" the NPT treaty. Just as it seemed likely that the conference would effectively end if nothing happened by Tuesday morning, Iran acceded to a compromise submitted by South Africa. The magic solution? A simple footnote making explicit that the contested phrase refers to all aspects of the treaty, including those that require major nuclear powers like the United States to disarm. 

Silly as it sounds, this was actually a rather clever solution. Iran got the clarification it desired, while others avoided setting a precedent for changing an agenda text and saved the conference from being a complete waste of time. Now, the agenda can move forward on disarmament, setting up a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, and compliance with NPT safeguards.

Even if the agenda antics were initially the product of confusion in Tehran, Iran appears to have recovered its usual diplomatic finesse. The country was certainly tarred as obstructionist, but it also benefited in at least two important ways. Leaving just two days for the conferees to deal with substantive issues, Iran has minimized the amount of time available for criticism of its own nuclear program. And by waiting for non-aligned South Africa to introduce a compromise, Iran placated its own supporters and avoided bowing to pressure from the West and its allies. This conference was not a resounding victory for Iran, but it does have successes to celebrate.

MUSTAFA OZER/AFP

Javier Solana, European Union's foreign affairs head, is in Istanbul today to talk turkey with Ali Larijani, Iran's nuclear negotiator. Solana comes to the meeting with the wind at his back:

On Monday, the EU agreed a total arms embargo, and added further people to the travel ban list - they are banned from the EU and their assets are frozen.

Accordingly, Larijani is making conciliatory nosies about possible new ideas from Solana, and he may have been given a little more negotiating room by Tehran. As veteran Middle East hand Dennis Ross succinctly explains over at TNR.com, "sticks [have] been more effective than carrots" in dealing with Iran. Why's that?

Because virtually all members of the Iranian elite, including moderate ones, appreciate the value of having nuclear weapons--they are a symbol of national power, they can be useful for deterring the United States, and they are seen as promoting Iranian dominance throughout the Middle East. No combination of inducements can match the value of having nuclear weapons. But the value of nuclear weapons has to be weighed against the potential cost. If the cost is international isolation and economic deprivation, the picture changes for a significant part of the Iranian elite.

As Iran weighs the potential costs of continued defiance of the international community, Solana's likely offer—a special definition of "enrichment" that satisfies Iran's domestic political needs while not posing a nuclear proliferation threat—should become more and more attractive to Iran's pragmatists. For my money, the best "inside baseball" on just who those pragmatists are is Ray Takeyh's piece in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. But rather than further attempts to isolate Iran, Takeyh favors a nuanced "détente" between the United States and Iran that he argues will "sideline the radicals and tip Iran's internal balance of power in their favor." Ross would lean heavier on the stick. Who's right?

AFP/Getty Images

North Korea seems to be back to its old tricks. Saturday's deadline for the country to "shut down and seal" the Yongbyon reactor, in accordance with the February deal to halt and eventually roll back the North Korean nuclear program, came and went—without even an official acknowledgment.

The deal has recently been stalled over the release of funds linked to North Korea totaling around $25 million, which are held in accounts at Banco Delta Asia in Macao. The United States, in what many saw as a significant concession, had previously green-lighted the unfreezing of the funds in hopes that the February deal would go forward. To save face, the United States demanded that the funds be used only for humanitarian purposes.

The Bush administration has now given up that demand, following the "enormously complicated" legal maneuvering required to release the money. This further concession could have been intended as an incentive for North Korea to move faster. It could also have been a nod to the inevitable, since the funds are controlled by a dizzying array of entities in North Korea; tracking them after their release would have been near impossible. In either case, it reveals just how weak the U.S. negotiating position is these days.

Interestingly, although the United States claims the funds were freed for collection last week, North Korea said on Friday that it would soon check whether it could access the money in Macau. Though unclear, this strongly implies the North Koreans had not checked already. It also indicates a surprising lack of urgency on their part, given how fiercely they fought to recover the money. Granted, the North Koreans did previously say they would freeze Yongbyon thirty days after the Macao funds were unfrozen (Saturday was the deadline under the original February agreement), but the Bush administration quickly rejected that position.

This incident also highlight's China's critical role: Beijing has asked for patience with North Korea. So, lacking better options, we wait.