Bad News: U. N. Says Iran On Cusp Of A-bombs. Good News: Lebanon RejectsTerrorists Candidates.

According to the calculations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  in its new report, Iran will be able to produce one nuclear bomb by the end of 2009, doubling that figure in 2010. sources note that these estimates only apply to uranium enrichment at Natanz. They do not factor in the product of Iran’s clandestine enrichment plants.

 Last week Obama completely skirted stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program which has alarmed, angered and frightened Middle East allies.

If Lebanon’s March 8 bloc headed by Hizballah wins Lebanon’s election Sunday, June 7, as it fully expects, its sponsors in Tehran have big plans for Hizballah’s leader, the fiery Hassan Narallah, to become strongman, charged with establishing a second Iran and remodeling Hizballah on the lines of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

 The two candidates for prime minister are Parliament Speaker Nabih Beri, leader of the Shiite Amal movement, and Abdullah Miqtay, a very good friend of Syrian president, Bashar Assad, with whom Tehran will share the spoils of defeating the pro-Western bloc led by Saad Hariri and incumbent prime minister Nouri Siniora.

 Whichever wins to job, the prime minister, government and its ruling mechanisms will all be reduced to rubber stamps for the will of the new national overlord, Hassan Nasrallah, and ultimately Tehran.

Their putsch, executed in the guise of a democratic election, will gradually force Lebanon, in all its walks of life - government, army, police, intelligence, education, religion and civil rights - into the molds of their counterparts in the Revolutionary Republic of Iran. In time, the large and vibrant pro-Western Christian community, which gives Lebanon its multi-religious, cosmopolitan character, will emigrate leaving behind a tame satellite of the ferociously radical Iran.

The Christian community is alive to the threat. Saturday, June 6, in an effort to rally Christian voters to turn out in force, the Maronite Christian Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir warned that Lebanon faces a threat to its very existence as an Arab entity.

 DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources dismiss the predictions in Riyadh, Cairo, Washington and Paris that the election will produce a national unity government. They are offering castles in the air to distract attention from their failure to halt the galloping Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah momentum for seizing control of Lebanon.

Friday night, June 5, as if on cue officials in Vienna disclosed that Iran was found to have accumulated quantities of low-enriched uranium (1,339 kilos produced since November 2008 plus 839 kilos in stock) - enough to convert into the amount of high-enriched uranium needed for making a single nuclear bomb.

 More than 7,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges were installed at Natanz, adding an extra 2,000 from February, the agency has found.

At this rate, 10,000 centrifuges will be spinning at Natanz with a capacity to enrich enough uranium for 2 Uranium (U-235)  fission bombs by the end of 2010, double the IAEA’s modest estimate by its own figures.

From January, when Obama took office, Tehran has won a year’s grace for developing its nuclear program. Obama said last week Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear program which few believe it is up to now. Direct dialogue on which Obama insists will not begin before July. Progress will be evaluated at year’s end, a six-month deadline accepted by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Iran has therefore been granted plenty of time to make hay i.e. make nukes - free of diplomatic or military constraints.

The IAEA admits its investigations are stalled both in Iran and Syria, where its inspectors also reported Friday the discovery of new traces of man-made uranium near Damascus.

Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is peaceful and refuse to answer questions or cooperate in any way with UN inspectors. At one point in its new report, the IAEA asked for cameras with different wide-range angles for Natanz, indicating that even there, the Iranians are playing cat and mouse to conceal the real scale of their activities from view.

Damascus is similarly stonewalling on the international inspectors’ inquiries about the new traces of man-made uranium particles. DEBKAfile’s military sources note that these particles could come from only two sources:

• One is a new enrichment site. This site has reported repeatedly in the past year that Syria had secretly restarted its banned nuclear activities at three concealed locations which were constructed after Israel destroyed its unfinished plutonium reactor on Sept. 6, 2007.
• Alternatively, Syria may be importing enriched uranium smuggled out of Iran, North Korea or Kazakhstan.

 The prevailing party in Sunday’s election promises a more moderate approach but it is unclear whetherthe situation will evolve into a workable coalition or devolve violence.