I think you are exactly right.

I would only add that for regional balance -- even though Israel is not a member of the NPT -- it would be good if they opened up their nuclear WEAPONS program for further scrutiny.

Iran is obviously trying to reach a nuclear weapons capability -- not necessarily make nuclear weapons.

A good way to encourage them to make nuclear weapons in the future would be to launch a military strike.

(Even that rather generous interpretation might not let Tehran entirely off the hook, however, as it seems likely that they informed the IAEA on September 21 because they had discovered that the United States had penetrated the program and they wanted to pre-empt today's revelation.)

Perhaps the US did the pre-empting? Since Iran reported the facility to the IAEA on the 21st, I assume that it's existence was going to come out in the press anyway. When that happened, the take-away might have been that Iran was engaging in good international behavior by complying with IAEA reporting requirements, and doing so on its own initiative. It also would have left egg on the face of Western intelligence, since the world would have learned of this facility directly from Iran, without any heads-up from the West. Washington would have responded, no doubt, that they knew about the facility all along. But who would believe them after the fact?

And if people did believe Washington, they would then have blamed them for covering up a security threat for political reasons. People would then say, "When exactly were you planning to tell the rest of us about this new facility?"

So it looks like Obama, Brown and Sarkozy decided to pre-empt a potentially very embarrassing situation by jumping in front of a camera to present the story that they had "caught" the Iranians first.

Where was the media on this? Who covers the IAEA beat? If the IAEA learned of this facility on the 21st, why hasn't that already been reported? Is the IAEA airtight?

And if this new facility poses any sort of threat, and Western governments knew of its existence long ago, then why didn't these governments report what they knew to the IAEA, so that the IAEA could make inquiries with Iran and investigate? Surely they could have given enough information to get the investigative ball rolling, without revealing sources and methods. Is this a case of hindering the ability of the IAEA to do its work, for the sake of negotiation games?

Another point to add is this new site is near the holy city of Qum, so any bombing of the site that either produced collateral damage or fallout would certainly have an even greater impact in terms of inflaming the Islamic world.

Here is the most important point, one that Professor Walt conveniently leaves out; From the LA Times Story:

"Reporting from Washington - U.S. intelligence officials said today that they have known about a newly disclosed Iranian nuclear facility for several years -- possibly as early as 2006 -- and that its dimensions and design all but rule out any civilian nuclear purpose."

Walt:

If we want to stop an Iranian bomb (as opposed to halting its nuclear enrichment activities), we are going to have to convince Iran that it doesn't need a nuclear deterrent to be safe...Persuading Tehran that they don't need a deterrent requires taking the threat of force, regime change, and the like off the table, instead of ratcheting the threat level up. I'm not saying that this approach will work; I'm saying that threatening preventive war won't. And actually launching a preventive war is likely to make things much worse.

I still don't see what possible argument or guarantees Iran would ever accept from us that would stop them from creating a nuclear bomb. Either we do nothing, we try to persuade them through sanctions, or we bomb them. Those are the only three options that exist in the real world. Pick your favorite, but don't try to tell us that promising really earnestly to take "the threat of force, regime change, and the like off the table" will appease them. Only an idiot would be persuaded by something like that.

What Walt can't quite bring himself to say is that he believes the only possible outcome is to let Iran get the bomb and hope deterance works. He just doesn't seem to have the intellectual honesty to say it explicitly.

Then we have gems like

If nuclear material is already present there (despite what Iran now says), then it is a clear violation of the agreements that Iran's government has repeatedly claimed it is upholding, and thus casts even more doubt on its credibility.

Great, but "credibility" is irrelevent to the Walt plan. Iran needs no creidibility because Walt doesn't think we should do anything to stop them from having a bomb.

Along the same lines, Walt says this is the "money quote"

The real purpose of negotiations, in my view, is to build a system of monitoring and inspections that will (1) provide maximum early warning of a potential future Iranian decision to "break out;" and (2) insure the maximum possible interval between that moment and the moment where Iran could actually have a bomb..

Why is this the money quote? If Walt doesn't believe in sanctions (see his previous blog posts) and doesn't believe in any use of force ever, what would Walt want us to do if we found out Iran was about to build a warhead?

Nothing

Mr. Walt writes "...the REVELATION that Iran has been building a second nuclear enrichment facility"

For someone such as Mr. Walt who postures themselves as an expert on the region and routinely offers up 'expert analysis' and prescriptions the only REVELATION should be a self realization that you have little understanding of the region and approach it with far more humility.

Dave 123 has it mostly right in writing that Professor Walt's recommendation on what to do about Iran's intention to build nukes is to do "NOTHING". Other blioggers also foresee such a U.S. policy. They shrug and console themselves by betting on "deterrence" as the way to treat the problem.
But there's a problem within that probelm. It is that the terms aof deterrence will have to be defined. We will have to say what we will do under what circumstance. And that, fellow bloggers, mightz prove to contain political dynamite of nuclear proportion. So maybe doing NOTHING is the most facile way to go. After all, we mnust have learned by now that facing up to a totally voluntarist dictator just simply oughtn't to politicall correct. It's jus tuttut.

Stephen there are several articles over at Huff Po that reported that Iran had not gotten wind that Obama was going to spill the beans but that Obama came out with this announcement after they were told that Iran had sent the IAEA their announcement that they had been building this facility. That Obama and team were trying to say that the Iranian government had not been abiding by rules.

Now Huff Po has an article up saying Iran has said yes no problems to the inspections

The intelligence committees in at least 5 countries knew that Iran was building four different locations for developing nuclear bombs. They actually bought the plans from A.O. Kahn from Pakistan on how to build the bombs, but, failed to purchase material from the former Soviet Union. Then they worked with the North Koreans to develop how to attach the bomb to the missiles and to increase the range of their missiles.

This should have been published in the 2007 NIE report but the Democrats in charge of the publication did not want G.W. Bush to weigh in on Iran. Thus we had Democrats hoping that Iran would work with the EU members and take the candy being offered to stop. Seems Iran has their own agenda.

Hitting Qom one of the holy places for the Shi'ites would plut the Iranian people against Israel although the people have been in the dark about these facilities also.

One can expect Israel to attack when Iran does not come clean on the other facilities. Then we will have Hizbullah and Hamas raining missiles down on Israel as Iran will tell their Al Quds commanders to turn everything loose on Israel.
This means the destruction of Lebanon and Gaza in big time pictures and if Syria is stupid enough to join in they will live to regret it. The entire world will howl at Israel, but, when one is faced with extinction one does fight back and fight back hard.

The most interesting question to me is what stand Obama will take.

Professor Walt, I'm sixteen years old, and I've already begun to analyze the logical fallacy within your argument, barely a few paragraphs in. You cite the New York Times article in a manner that suggests that just because Iran has nuclear "reactors," that doesn't necessitate they have nuclear "weapons," or the capability to develop them! Call me a cynic, but allowing a country that makes little exaggerated threats to wipe another sovereign state "off the map" to have any nuclear capabilities, energy or otherwise, is a poor choice. Your argumentative flaw was that you essentially created a false logic by omission. By only demonstrating one side of the argument, and pleading with naiveness that the other one did not matter (by not including it), you created a new premise on which you could challenge the base assumption, which is that a nuclear Iran, is a dangerous Iran. And in addition, a former teacher of mine told me once that "In the Persian Gulf more than any other place on Earth, where there's a will, there's a way."

Gene44 on Sun writes:
>...Hitting Qom one of the holy places for the Shi'ites >would plut the Iranian people against Israel although the >people have been in the dark about these facilities also....
Quite. But nothing so numinous is needed. The Israelis
could simply claim to be employing a drastic sanction when preventing Iran from exporting its oil. That would not be all that hard to do: bomb the Kharg Island and Abadam oil terminals, plus a small handful of strategic pumping stations of the Iranian pipeline network. To be sure, in time the damage would be repaired (probably, as usual, with the help of Texans) which might remind Ahmedinajad that he could once again have to repair a bombing if he didn't shape up. It might also sweeten the
ayatollahs toward the people who helped Iran out of s situation that confronted them with total economic collapse.
There's no assuming that sanctions need be enforced by peacefukl diplomacy exclusively: and there's no need to cite Clausewitz when asserting that diplomacy may have a violent, but repairable, extension.

I just want to remind everybody that the Persian invented the chess game; therefore any newcomer cannot outsmart them in that field. They are very clever at the diplomatic gamesmanship and the law is on their side. Having said that, Iran behavior is conformity to the post September 11 world. Before accusing Iran of any wrong doing, it is important to put into perspective the US bellicose behavior while the neocons were in power. The new paradigm might is right was the modus operandi. North Korea was under the threat of airstrike while the IAEA had inspectors on the ground and all the facilities under the safeguard agreement, the US put pressure on them relentlessly and they were cornered. They left the agency in conformity with the law and acquired the ultimate weapon. Now the West wants to negotiate with them so to prevent the spread of the weapon. No one now is talking about military action against NK; the Iranians were taking note and realized that acquiring this weapon is a security guaranty that any treaty would confer. Having said that again, I am not insinuating that they are building one. They would be foolish not to do so to guarantee their survival.
The mainstream media never mention that Iran is in full compliance with the NPT why? I read articles and books that Professor Walt authored, I am a bit disappointed to see that the professor is repeating the line of the mainstream media when he writes.” the REVELATION that Iran has been building a second nuclear enrichment facility". Had the western intelligence agencies had unshackle evidence that the Iranians were doing something remotely wrong in this site, it would have made it to the mainstream media before M. Amhadinedjad came to the UN. As we speak no intelligence agencies know with certainty that Iran possess the bomb. The Iranians notified the IAEA of the new enrichment site in Qom within the prescribe deadline (180 days before introducing any nuclear material in the facility) the West want to create a hype before the schedule round of negotiation of October 1st and said they discover a new site. All I can say at this point is “this round of negotiation is doom to failed “chronique d’une mort annoncee”.

Once upon a time there was UN Security Council Resolution No. 487, on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, dating from June 19, 1981, that called upon Israel to place its nuclear facility under the International Atomic Energy Agency's surveylance. Here we have a rouge nation, Isral, threatening a law-abiding one, Iran.