Minot Air Force Base is not having a good news year. Last year, cruise missiles armed with nuclear weapons left the base by accident; this March, the Air Force discovered it had inadvertently shipped fuse components for nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006; and in May, Minot's 5th Bomb Wing failed a security test. Now we have news of another mishap, this time involving classified material at Minot.

In a story that more properly belongs in the beginning of a bad made-for-TV drama, a missile crew in possession of a nuclear launch code "component," while waiting for transport in a crew rest area, fell asleep.

An initial report simply said that "a nuclear launch code was lost or misplaced," but the Air Force later clarified that the codes in possession of the sleeping crewmembers had been superseded by a new set and were no longer usable. In addition, according to the press release, the codes were locked up with a combination known only to the crew and the entire facility was secured throughout the incident by Air Force Security Forces.

Now, it is true that the codes were probably never in danger of being compromised. It would also be understandable in almost any other circumstance that the crew would fall asleep while waiting for transport; generally, missile crews consist of three people who rotate watches over a three-day period. These rotations are likely tiring, and indeed the crews have been complaining about the length of the new rotations (for more about life as a "missileer," check out this fascinating article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). And the punishment for the people at fault looks to be swift.

More worrisome, though, is the pattern incidents like these are beginning to reveal. The "loose nukes" incident last year resulted from a whole cascade of minor security slip-ups just like this one, and where one such incident is reported many more are likely present. The prestige of working with U.S. nuclear forces continues to drop -- how do we make sure the ultimate weapons stay secure if things continue to get worse?

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Yesterday, Pyongyang submitted a long-overdue declaration of its nuclear programs to China, in accordance with agreements made during the six-party talks. U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed the move as "one step in the multi-step process laid out by the six-party talks," immediately lifted the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act, and notified Congress of his intent to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

What does all this mean in practice? The Bush administration's moves are highly symbolic, and unlikely to have any immediate, practical impact. Most U.S. sanctions based on the Trading with the Enemy Act (pdf) were already lifted in 2000, and most of those still in place are authorized by an overlapping hodgepodge of other laws and regulations. Minor changes will go into effect -- for instance, some imports from North Korea will no longer require licenses -- but for the most part trade policies will remain unchanged.

Bush's intention to remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list is a similarly symbolic gambit; the actual removal cannot go into effect for 45 days after the notification to Congress, and in any case it is probably contingent on verifying North Korea's nuclear declaration. Countries on the terror list cannot receive, among other things, U.S. economic aid or loans from the World Bank and other financial institutions. Removing North Korea from the list may allow more money to flow in, but, as a U.S. Treasury spokesman noted yesterday, sanctions aimed at preventing money laundering, illicit finance, and weapons proliferation will remain firmly in place.

Practicalities aside, this development has rightly been hailed as a diplomatic success; the New York Times today declared it a "triumph." The path to a denuclearized North Korea is still long and the process could easily be derailed at any point, but it is nice to finally have some reason, however slight, for optimism.

Earlier this week, intelligence officials released new evidence confirming that the "Box on the Euphrates" near al-Kibar in Syria was in fact a nuclear reactor. They also released photographs that they used to argue that North Korea was providing significant levels of assistance to the reactor project in Syria.

The Syrian facility apparently contained a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor (a derivation from the Calder Hall design) extremely similar to the reactor at Yongbyon. It's a relatively simple design, extensively described in the public domain, and one that's capable of producing plutonium useable in nuclear weapons. Despite the surfeit of publicly available information on the reactor, the intelligence community firmly asserts that, in this case, the design information came from North Korea.

Noting that the Syrian reactor seemed ill-suited to electricity production (not least because there were no detectable power lines leading away from the site), intelligence analysts also concluded that it would have few uses other than for producing plutonium for an illicit nuclear weapons program. Israel came to a similar conclusion and, judging this to be a potentially existential threat, bombed the reactor as a result.

These revelations raise more questions than they answer. For instance, why release this evidence now? The analysts said it was hoped that, among other things, releasing this information would prod the North Koreans to be more forthcoming in the six-party talks. It seems just as likely that they may just be infuriated and walk away from negotiations (there is no public sign of such a reaction yet, though).

Perhaps most notable in the briefing on Thursday was how coy the analysts were being about the possibility that Syria has a covert nuclear weapons program. They noted very specifically that "there is no reprocessing facility in the region of al Kibar," but refused to elaborate when asked whether the Syrians might be building such a facility elsewhere. They also refused to comment on how Syria might have been planning to acquire the natural uranium required to fuel the reactor and they dodged a question about how North Korean diplomats have so far reacted to this disclosure.

These omissions could be designed to minimize diplomatic blowback -- perhaps the administration simply hoped to nudge the North Koreans gently, rather than shove them -- or perhaps the spooks simply don’t have much more information. Hopefully the North Korean and Syrian reactions over the next week or so will provide more insight. Watch this space.

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North Korea has been stepping up incendiary rhetoric in the past few days, ostensibly in response to South Korean comments that it would attack the North's nuclear installations in the event that Pyongyang launched atomic weapons. Once the North's preemptive attack is underway, the Korean Central News Agency declared, "everything will turn to ashes, not just a sea of flames."

Coupled with missile tests and diplomatic maneuvers, these comments are worrisome but not necessarily out of the ordinary for Pyongyang. Nevertheless, North Korea's claim is worth investigating: Can it really turn "everything" into ashes, or even "just" a sea of flames, given its relatively miniscule nuclear arsenal?

If "everything" means all of South Korea, the answer is definitely no. If it means Seoul, the question requires a bit more examination. Basically we need to know how many nuclear weapons Pyongyang has and how powerful they are. Knowing these facts allows some projections that, while extremely rough, are nonetheless interesting.

Very little reliable information exists, but based on aggregated seismic data from North Korea's 2006 nuclear test, Harvard analyst Hui Zhang estimates (pdf) that the yield of that explosion was between 0.5 and 2 kilotons (for comparison, the yield of the weapon used at Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons, while other countries' first nuclear tests generally yielded 9 kilotons or above). For simplicity’s sake, let's assume North Korea's test yielded about a kiloton. It is even more unclear what the weapon was designed to yield, but it was probably supposed to be between 4 and 20 kilotons.

As for the number of weapons, North Korea has recently declared (pdf) that it has 30 kilograms of separated, potentially weapons-usable plutonium. More almost certainly exists, but all of Pyongyang's usable plutonium has probably not been made into weapons. Since an implosion-type weapon requires (pdf) about 5 kg of plutonium, North Korea likely has at most six weapons.

Excluding fires and making some other simplifications, if we assume that Pyongyang can do no better than a 1-kiloton air burst, each explosion would kill about 50 percent of the population within a fifth of a mile. Six bombs would therefore kill half the population within about two thirds of a square mile -- an area encompassing not even half a percent of Seoul, which is about 234 square miles.

If, on the other hand, North Korea has six 10-kiloton bombs, it could kill 50 percent of the population in just over 3 square miles of Seoul -- slightly over 1 percent of the city's area. These calculations are probably very conservative, but even if the damages wildly exceeded expectations it seems unlikely more than 10 percent of Seoul's area would see widespread destruction. I certainly do not intend to minimize the horror of that level of death and destruction. But if North Korea wants to burn all of Seoul to ash, it is going to need more than a tiny nuclear arsenal to do so.

Late Wednesday night, the U.S.S. Lake Erie used its Aegis missile-defense system to shoot down an ailing reconnaissance satellite as it passed over the Pacific. Aegis is a key piece of the larger U.S. missile-defense system, combining extremely sophisticated ship-borne radars with heat-seeking interceptor missiles that can reach targets in low orbits (such as short- to mid-range ballistic missiles). After successfully using Aegis to knock out a target it was ostensibly never designed for, some may ask if this test of the system proves that the American missile-defense system works.

In a word, the answer is no. The mission is a qualified success for Aegis, since satellites and ballistic missiles share many characteristics at certain stages of flight. But taking out a crippled satellite and destroying an attacking ballistic missile are not the same thing. Most importantly, the satellite's trajectory was known in great detail and it could not maneuver under its own power. That's not the case for enemy ballistic missiles, which have unknown trajectories for large portions of their flights (though we can often guess where they're headed). Advanced missiles, moreover, are likely to be able to maneuver themselves midcourse and release decoys to confuse the missile-defense interceptors. Since shooting a missile out of the sky is a lot like hitting a bullet with another bullet, precise positioning data is crucial.

Finally, Navy personnel were able to choose the location and timing of the intercept. This allowed them to maximize visibility, to wait until the seas were calm enough for an ideal launch, and to keep as many radars and telescopes as necessary nearby to guide the interceptor and track the launch. The satellite was also several times larger than a ballistic missile would have been and was therefore easier to see.

That said, the fact that the Pentagon was able to reprogram missile-defense hardware for an anti-satellite shot in roughly a month is a geopolitically loaded development. China and Russia have long suspected that U.S. missile-defense programs were cover for eventual space warfare capabilities. Indeed, the Pentagon tacitly acknowledged the momentous nature of the mission by giving the secretary of defense final launch authority, rather than the captain of the Lake Erie. Now watch how many other countries suddenly find their satellites are crippled and need to be shot down -- purely for safety reasons, of course.

The smelter, from a photo taken between 1911 and 1916 (Via SMH).

When pricing a house next door to the contaminated site of a former uranium smelter, even a house with waterfront access, most realtors would aim low. In Sydney, though, one such house is on the market for roughly $3.6 million. The realtor describes the site nearby, full of radioactive dirt contaminated with "traces" of uranium and thorium, as just "a slight variation from the norm."

Not surprisingly, the house has been on the market for awhile. Many potential buyers have expressed interest, but so far nobody has purchased it (the crackle of Geiger counters from across the street may have something to do with this). As nuclear power expands, though, it is worth examining just how dangerous such contamination can really be.

Few specifics about the case in Sydney have been released, but it is possible to speak generally about the materials involved. Uranium is only mildly radioactive, and exposure even to high levels of uranium is not known to cause cancer (high levels, if ingested, can cause kidney and tissue damage, though). So, "traces" of it are unlikely to be dangerous. Thorium can give you cancer if you inhale it in large amounts (or possibly when you ingest it), but has not been known to cause birth defects or fertility problems, as some other radioactive materials can. Again, "traces" of thorium are likely harmless.

The wild card in this situation is the radioactivity from the soil. When certain types of powerful radiation encounter everyday materials, those materials can become "activated." In other words, they become radioactive (to a weaker degree) themselves. However, after nearly a century, the soil at this site in Sydney would have reverted to a very low, though perhaps above "background," level of radioactivity. (The New South Wales government and an independent consultancy say the radiation level is higher than background, but safe.)

While a higher than usual level of radiation in the area sounds scary, it is probably not all that dangerous. Many studies have found that constant exposure to low levels of radiation does not pose a health risk. One study, performed by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, found no increased cancer risk for people living near 62 large nuclear facilities. If nuclear power spreads, we should remain vigilant, but there is no need for paranoia.   

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On January 1, 2008, amid all the turmoil resulting from the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazhir Bhutto, Pakistan and India quietly exchanged detailed data on the locations of their nuclear facilities. Intended as a confidence-building measure, this exchange has been happening annually since 1992, under the terms of the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities.

The agreement has held through both countries' nuclear tests in 1998, a standoff over Kashmir in 2001, and numerous terrorist provocations, so it should not be too surprising that the exchange occurred successfully in the midst of the current tension in the region. The fact that it occurred again, however, does indicate that the country’s troubles have not affected the Army—historically the strongest institution in Pakistan and the backbone of the government—enough to prevent it from keeping its international obligations.

While this exchange is a pretty thin reed with which to divine the current state of Pakistan’s government, nuclear confidence-building measures like this have a long and relatively successful history. The two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (STARTs) involved the exchange of copious amounts of data between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (and later Russia), in order to build confidence and allow nuclear arsenals to shrink. Today, with START II about to expire and no renewal in sight, many experts believe we are losing a critical tool for maintaining confidence between Russia and the United States.

The Indo-Pakistani information exchange is all the more significant because of the sensitivity of the data provided. Pakistan, for instance, has been unwilling to provide the United States with the locations of its critical nuclear sites, which has hindered U.S. attempts to help improve the security of Pakistani nuclear weapons. Let's hope more disclosures of sensitive information between India and Pakistan can further defuse tensions in the future.

An Indian Charlie-class sub (via FAS)

Passport has already had a lot of coverage of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (you can see my take here over at Danger Room), so I'd like to call attention to a development that has hitherto flown under the radar: India is readying its first domestically built nuclear submarine for sea trials in 2009.

The sub, reportedly a modified version of the Soviet/Russian Charlie-II, has been code-named the Advanced Technology Vessel. While the Soviet Charlie II sub did not have the capability to carry nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the Indian version reportedly will. (Though one source implies it may use cruise missiles instead.) Either way, the program is further evidence of India's accelerating military expansion. It should be noted, though, that the 2009 test date is a slight slip from revelations a few months ago, which said the sub would be tested next year.

India's ostensible motive is to develop a secure "second-strike capability," i.e. the ability to withstand a nuclear attack and still be able to hit back with nukes. Both India and Pakistan currently rely on a combination of bombers and short- to mid-range missiles for their nuclear delivery platforms, though India is more dependent on aircraft and Pakistan on missiles. A seafaring deterrent capability for India will provide a more secure force, but it is unlikely to make Pakistan more vulnerable to nuclear attack—the country's lack of strategic depth already ensures its vulnerability. India will have an advantage in survivability, though. Submarines are the most secure type of nuclear delivery platform possible. China may also have reason to be concerned, given ongoing border disputes with India and the potential for further competition in the future.

The context in which the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, revealed the submarine also sheds light on the Indo-Russian defense relationship. India has only one aircraft carrier in its inventory — the INS Viraat — which is aging and operating well beyond its expected lifetime. India therefore ordered an aircraft carrier from Russia to be delivered in 2008, so as to prevent a gap in Indian naval capabilities. Unfortunately, the project is behind schedule and Russia has doubled the price tag already. As a result, Admiral Mehta called for an end to price negotiations with Russia on the carrier contract amid calls for the entire relationship to be reexamined. Given these difficulties, look for India to move for more indigenous capabilities — like its nuclear sub — as fast as possible in coming years.

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In the next few days, the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to release its "eagerly-awaited" report on Iran's disputed nuclear activities. If the agency finds that Iran has not been sufficiently forthcoming about its nuclear program, the report could spur a drive toward further sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.

Earlier this week, Iran released documents that the IAEA has been demanding for two years: blueprints showing how to machine uranium metal into spherical shapes appropriate for the core of a nuclear weapon. When asked why it would have information that has "no value outside of a nuclear weapons program," Iran responded that it received them inadvertently while purchasing its nuclear equipment on the black market decades ago.

On the surface, this claim is plausible. The A.Q. Khan network (and presumably, any other extant illicit networks supplying nuclear material) dealt in all types of dangerous materials and information, and the nature of a black market lends itself to disorganization and mistakes like the one Iran claims occurred.

Even if Iran did not actively seek out information that could only be used in nuclear weapons, though, the real question is why the country's leaders would wait two years to comply with the IAEA's request to relinquish the documents. At best, the Iranians were holding the blueprints in reserve for situations like today's, as a bargaining chip. At worst, they were holding them to eventually use them in a weapons program. Either way, Iran was not cooperating fully with the IAEA in its attempts to ascertain the true nature of the country's nuclear program—not a good sign.

Fortunately, though, these documents apparently did not contain blueprints for an entire nuclear weapons core. Machining enriched uranium (or plutonium) metal into a perfect sphere is merely one of many engineering challenges posed by an implosion nuclear weapon—an explosives array must be carefully designed to compress the metal effectively, for instance, and as we've seen with Iran, the enrichment process itself is very difficult to perfect without help. Hopefully the IAEA report will show Iran has benign intentions or, at least, that it has not progressed further towards building a nuclear weapon. But we'll have to wait and see.

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Last week, a late-night phone call between President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sparked widespread sputters about the vital signs of the U.S.-India nuclear deal. In response to questioning, White House spokesman Tony Fratto responded "no, it’s not dead," even though Singh has, at the very least, set the deal aside for now.

The deal has been slipping over the past few months because of Indian domestic politics. Singh's government depends on the Communists for support in Parliament. When the government signed the nuclear deal with the United States, the Communists were infuriated. They believed the deal would sacrifice Indian sovereignty and potentially risk indigenous scientific development. A confrontation ensued: The Communists vaguely threatened to withdraw support for the government (which would force a snap election) if the deal were not subjected to parliamentary debate, and the government dared them to go ahead.

The deal now appears to be in worse shape than the White House is willing to acknowledge. Singh's government blinked first, and final negotiations on the deal have been postponed, apparently indefinitely. As Singh's office delicately put it, "[C]ertain difficulties have arisen with respect to the operationalization of the India-U.S. civil nuclear cooperation agreement."

Singh does not want to risk early elections, apparently. Barring that possibility, the current government will remain in power until 2009. A statement by an important parliamentary ally summed up what is likely the government's thinking, "Frankly, the deal is not important… The government is important."

As attempts to finalize the deal drag on, key supporters in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and the U.S. Congress may also lose enthusiasm. And as the United States enters election season, the Democrats will probably be increasingly unlikely to hand a foreign-policy success to President Bush and the Republicans. Another indication that prospects for the deal are slipping comes from its supporters, who have begun to hedge their bets by attempting to "describe the nuclear accord as one piece of a broader relationship" that will endure, regardless of the deal's success. The deal isn't completely dead yet, but it is looking less and less likely in the near future.

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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?

As the so-called "war on terror" rolls on, the balance between security and public oversight remains tense. Recently, this tension surfaced when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed a series of previously undisclosed accidents that took place over the past few years at Nuclear Fuel Services, one of only two U.S. companies that are allowed to process highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear fuel. In 2004, citing national-security concerns, the NRC deemed as "Official Use Only" all documents relating to Nuclear Fuel Services and the other HEU processing company, BWX Technologies, and sealed them away from public view.

iStockphoto.com

As a result, several "abnormal occurrences" remained secret, including one particularly dangerous incident involving a spill of 9 gallons of HEU in liquid solution on March 6, 2006. When in liquid form, HEU must be handled with particular care to prevent creating a critical mass. If enough of the liquid collects within a certain volume, a dangerous, uncontrolled chain reaction can occur. Usually, such reactions will not result in a nuclear explosion, but they do release significant amounts of radiation. Processing facilities have extensive safeguards in place to prevent this, but accidents do happen.

This time, the spill did not turn out to be serious, ranking a lowly 2 out of 7 on the IAEA's International Nuclear Events Scale. (With a 2, there is very little threat to the surrounding area or even to the actual facility. Three Mile Island was a 5. With a 7, you're in Chernobyl territory.)

It's worrisome, however, that the NRC kept such a basic safety breach secret for so long. Rather than examining documents to see which truly contained sensitive information, the NRC just hid everything. And interestingly, the NRC did not fine Nuclear Fuel Services for the violation. Instead, a performance review was initiated. In past years, the NRC fined companies for violations like this and made the events public. Replacing fines with performance reviews is fine, but the NRC should bring back public announcements. To its credit, the NRC at least admits that "the pendulum maybe swung too far" towards excessive secrecy.

Potential terrorists might benefit from knowing the exact details of an accident or the security changes implemented after it, but there will rarely be much harm in disclosing the incident itself. In some cases even the old security procedures that led to such accidents could be safely disclosed, if they were no longer being used. And in general, increasing the transparency of the NRC's oversight role can spur greater vigilance and hopefully help prevent more dangerous "nuclear mishaps" in the future.

The nuclear community has been abuzz lately with talk of a "nuclear renaissance"—a prophesied increase in the use of nuclear energy due to its low greenhouse emissions and relative dependability. Charles Ferguson and Sharon Squassoni outlined their concerns for FP here, and in fact, a lot of nonproliferation wonks have been agonizing over this for a different reason than Ferguson and Squassoni lay out: An increase in nuclear energy will almost inevitably involve the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies.

Here's something else for the wonks to chew over. At this week's Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference, Mark Hibbs of Nucleonics Weekly, one of the most careful reporters in the field, expressed his belief that if nuclear power expands as projected, the current market to supply precision materials will not be sufficient to meet demand. This could force the creation of a "second tier" of nuclear suppliers who, by virtue of inexperience, callousness, or other factors, may be less committed to export controls like those recommended by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. 

If Hibbs is right, a lot of dangerous technology could wind in the hands of the wrong people. Watch this space.

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.