What Times is it?

Rick Gladstone, New York Times, October 31:

Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country had interpreted Iran’s conversion of some enriched uranium to fuel rods for civilian use as evidence that Iran had delayed ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. 

The assertion, by Defense Minister Ehud Barak in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, amounted to the first explanation from him as to why he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu softened their position in September over the possibility of a military strike to thwart what they called Iran’s drive toward imminent nuclear weapons capability.

Funny, because some people knew about it three weeks ago. Of course Amos Harel got the story not from Barak but from "senior Israeli defense officials"—that's where that pesky Red Line went. Of double course Harel got the story from Barak on "background" and has only now chosen to out himself, to the UK, who knows why. There are even suspicions, you'll be shocked to hear, that it has something to do with politics and the oncoming Israeli elections.

While Barak was dancing in London, Netanyahu was prancing in France, of course, getting François Hollande (who I fear is somewhat out of his depth on this subject) to sign on to the ever escalating demands for a more severe sanctions regime. For some reason the Times has nothing to say about this trip. (No, I don't think it's a conspiracy of any sort, we New Yorkers have a lot of different stuff on our minds at the moment. But they are really not covering that whole scene very well.)

Meanwhile, as the story of Iran's nuclear weapons is every day more clearly a frivolous story about Israeli politics and not about Iran at all, the sanctions grow more and more painful for ordinary Iranians—not for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to say nothing of those who actually run the country—and are clearly harming US interests. Can we please have this discussion some time?

From Haaretz.