The Obama Administration Understated How Close Iran Is to the Bomb for Years
In the eyes of the Obama administration, the American people are not allowed to know how close Iran is to a nuclear bomb: The Barack Obama administration has estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public. Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that the U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. When asked how long the administration has held this assessment, Moniz said: "Oh quite some time." He added: "They are now, they are right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly 19,000. Plus all the . . . . R&D work. If you put that together it's very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3 months." Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1. Here is the puzzling thing: When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune. He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement. Obama, October 2013: President Barack Obama says U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran is still "a year or more" away from producing a nuclear weapon, an assessment he acknowledged was at odds with Israel. Obama also put distance between U.S. and Israeli assessments of when Iran might have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. Israeli officials have said Iran is just months away from having the capacity and knowledge to build a bomb, while Obama said Tehran was a year or more away. Now we know the Israeli assessment was correct, and the U.S. public assessment was disinformation. I suppose the Obama administration could argue that the assessment was classified, and that we didn't want the Iranians to know how much we knew. But once Israel came out and started revealing the actual status of the nuclear program, what was the advantage to "playing dumb" and pretending we didn't know how close Tehran was to a bomb? What did we gain by claiming the Israelis were wrong? "Trust me," said the liar. Free-Range Parenting? It's a Niche Audience Maybe Americans are more accepting of the nanny state because we're convinced that all pre-teen kids need nannies, all the time. Allahpundit digests some poll results suggesting wide support for never leaving kids alone: Maybe this is a righty-blog phenomenon and I'm guilty of epistemic closure, but every time I see a story about CPS cracking down on "free-range parents" written up online, the author's attitude unfailingly is exasperated disbelief at how paranoid the state has become about unattended children. But that attitude is not shared by most of the public, and it's especially not shared by most women. Of the five questions listed above, the lowest amount of opposition among women was 67 percent who said they wouldn't let their pre-teen walk to school alone. (Fully 83 percent oppose letting a child that age use public transportation alone.) I guessed that young adults might be a bit more likely than older ones to grant kids some freedom, partly because they're closer in age to the hypothetical pre-teen of the question and partly because many of them aren't parents yet themselves. But no, they oppose "free-range parenting" about as strongly as older demographics do, and on the question of letting a pre-teen go to the park alone, they're actually the least likely of the four age groups to approve of the idea. I also guessed that Republicans might be a bit more willing than Democrats to let their kids out unsupervised, since Republican parents are more likely to live in small towns and rural areas. Nope to that too: GOPers are actually less likely than Dems to let their kid go to the store or ride public transportation alone. Nor is this the only poll supporting the conclusion that Americans have gotten much more protective of their kids over time. Last August, a Reason poll found that 82 percent(!) wanted to make it actually illegal for a nine-year-old to play in a park unsupervised. Who knew that keeping kids on a short leash was the great uniting principle in our otherwise bitterly divided country? Over on the pop-culture podcast, my co-host Mickey theorized this was the consequence of a 1980s-era mass paranoia about child abductions. Kidnappings weren't invented in the 1980s, but the media coverage of them (and heavy-handed afterschool specials, and "very special" episodes of family sitcoms dealing with kidnappings) intensified in that era. (Think of John Walsh.) The well-meaning effort to teach children not to talk to strangers, get into their cars, etc., probably also communicated the clear signal that the world is full of people who want to hurt you and other children. Into the 1990s and Bush years, the media devoured tales of child abduction (Elizabeth Smart) even as the rates of actual kidnappings went down. The Washington Post: "The number of missing person reports involving minors has been at record low levels in recent years."
As noted in the podcast, in Illinois, it is against the law to leave a child under the age of 14 at home alone. Our Perpetual Season of Quick-Passing Outrage Storms Some thoughts on outrage storms that arrive and depart so rapidly, like the thunderstorms of spring and summer . . . Ace: One commenter there noted what I have frequently said: This isn't politics, this is simply personality disorder. Specifically, the Histrionic Personality Disorder, which affects 2-3% of the population (and 4 times as many women as men). HPD is part of the "dramatic" cluster of personality disorders -- and the word "dramatic" there is well-chosen. Histrionics see discord and attacks everywhere, and seek attention by shrieking about imagined schemes against them. Earlier Ace noted this sudden new "rule" in American society, where social sins, of saying or doing something offensive or tasteless or controversial, now are expected to carry economic consequences, i.e., getting someone fired from their job or their business shut down. You're supposedly such a pariah for your transgression that keeping you on the payroll is going to bring dire consequences for your employer. For example, ESPN's Britt McHenry said some really nasty things to a towing-company employee. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn't. ESPN suspended her for a week. I don't see how it's my business. I really don't see how it's ESPN's business. Are there people out there who are pledging to never watch ESPN again because McHenry threw a tantrum when her car was towed? Is this going to affect her ability to do her job? Did McHenry look snotty, or like she has temper-control issues, at that moment? Sure. A lot of people behave furiously when something infuriating has happened. Should they try to control their tempers? Sure. But if we're going to be in the business of firing people from jobs because of public displays of rage . . . there are some other folks who ought to head for the door: The definitive Rahm Emanuel story takes place in Little Rock, Ark., in the heady days after Bill Clinton was first elected President. It was there that Emanuel, then Clinton's chief fund-raiser, repaired with George Stephanopoulos, Mandy Grunwald and other aides to Doe's, the campaign hangout. Revenge was heavy in the air as the group discussed the enemies -- Democrats, Republicans, members of the press - who wronged them during the 1992 campaign. Clifford Jackson, the ex-friend of the President and peddler of the Clinton draft-dodging stories, was high on the list. So was William Donald Schaefer, then the Governor of Maryland and a Democrat who endorsed George Bush. Nathan Landow, the fund-raiser who backed the candidacy of Paul Tsongas, made it, too. Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table. ''Dead!'' he screamed. The group immediately joined in the cathartic release: ''Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!'' This charming man was recently reelected the mayor of Chicago. (Fun question: If Emanuel's "Dead! Dead! Dead!" raging tantrum had been caught on video, would his political career have gone differently?) Megan McArdle: Shame doesn't just punish wrongdoers; it also turns us into our own moral enforcers. Once we've been shamed, we are strongly motivated to avoid doing the things that brought it on. Or at least, most of us are -- one of the hallmarks of sociopaths is that they don't feel shame or remorse. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, shame is good. Shame is right. Shame works. So we need shame. The problem is, maybe we don't always need so much of it. In the small groups we evolved to live in, shame is tempered by love and forgiveness. People are shamed for some transgression, then they are restored to the group. Ultimately, the shamed person is not an enemy; he or she is someone you need and want to get along with. This is how you make up with your spouse after one or both of you has done or said something terrible. In a large group, shame is punishment, but it still has a restorative aspect. One of the most surprising passages of Ronson's book reveals that the drunken driver who had to stand by the side of the road with a sign detailing his crimes got more compassion and support than bitter catcalls from the people who drove by him. On the Internet, when all the social context is stripped away and you don't even have to look at the face of the person you're being mean to, shame loses its social, restorative function. Shame-storming isn't punishment. It's a weapon. And weapons aren't supposed to be used against people in your community; they're for strangers, people in some other group that you don't like very much. ADDENDA: Credit Jeb Bush for the ability to laugh at his past grooming and fashion choices: "I think Ron Burgundy took inspiration from these pics." 
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