Iran further along on their nuke program than originally believed?

That's the gist of this Times Online story today which states that Israel is concerned when it comes to the Iranians thanks to a couple of breakthroughs they've recently had:

THE head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, is to visit Israel later this month as Britain forges closer links with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Iran’s nuclear programme is expected to be high on the agenda in an intelligence-sharing process described by Israeli officials as a “strategic dialogue”. It is building on long-standing cooperation between MI6 and Mossad, both of which have extensive spy networks in the Middle East.

Scarlett, 59, is likley to be briefed by Meir Dagan, 63, the head of Mossad, on Israel’s latest information about the Iranian nuclear programme. It is understood that Israel has made a breakthrough in intelligence-gathering within Iran.

There is mounting concern in Israel that Iran’s nuclear capability may be far more advanced than was recognised in a declassified assessment by the US National Intelligence Estimate last December, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development programme in 2003 in response to international pressure.

One source claimed the new information was on a par with intelligence that led Israel to discover and then destroy a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria last September. ...

It is thought that if Israel were considering military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, it would want to ensure it had diplomatic support in London and Washington because of the danger of triggering a wider Middle East conflict.

“We’re doing a lot of things about Iran,” Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, said last week. “We say we shouldn’t rule out any option. Not ruling out options means action, but the worst thing to do at the moment is to talk [about it].” Whitehall officials said Scarlett’s visit was “routine”.

While many will blow this off as mere speculation, we'd recommend against that. See, many analysts downplayed the airstrike Israel conducted on Syria in September. They blew off the evidence that Israel had. Even the UN backed them up until they claimed the redacted document had a "translation error."

There is no doubt in our minds that Iran is working on a nuclear program, and there's even less doubt about Syria's possible role in it. (We still feel the site in Syria was meant to help Iran's program along as well as benefiting Assad's ambitions of getting a nuclear weapon.) If Israel has information, they'd best pass it along to Downing Street, and US intel agencies. And if Iran is further along on the program than analysts believe, then it's time for nations in the West to come up with some hefty contingency plans to deal with a revelation that could very well rock the region in the next year or so.

Publius II