Calling Out Your Neighbors

The Times of London is claiming Israeli PM Netanyahu has called out Russian nuclear experts as the ones helping Iran build a nuclear weapon.

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow.

Netanyahu flew to the Russian capital with Uzi Arad, his national security adviser, last month in a private jet.

His office claimed he was in Israel, visiting a secret military establishment at the time. It later emerged that he was holding talks with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and President Dmitry Medvedev.

“We have heard that Netanyahu came with a list and concrete evidence showing that Russians are helping the Iranians to develop a bomb,” said a source close to the Russian defence minister last week.

“That is why it was kept secret. The point is not to embarrass Moscow, rather to spur it into action.”

Israeli sources said it was a short, tense meeting at which Netanyahu named the Russian experts said to be assisting Iran in its nuclear programme.

Now the Russians are claiming they can't control every nuclear scientist they ever had (after all, they tried to do that and failed as the Soviet Union) but it's certainly not hard to imagine that freelance Russian scientists would seek a little more capitalistic application of their skills on the open market.

But the real claim here is not that the Russians are helping the Iranians, but that the Russians are helping the Iranians build a nuclear bomb, not a nuclear reactor for peaceful atomic power purposes and all.

And it's not the Israelis quoted in the article, but a Russian defense source who said "bomb". That's kind of an important distinction.

I think today's news and yesterday's news on Iran are somewhat related in the grand scheme of things.