"This is not rocket science, at the front end"

As the Maine goes... No, wait.

Correction, in its entirety (August 28 2015) on the story about Parchin:

VIENNA (AP) — In a story Aug. 19 about an arrangement over alleged past nuclear weapons work between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, The Associated Press erroneously referred to Parchin as a "nuclear site. In fact, it's a military site where some believe nuclear work occurred.

A corrected version of the story is below:

An unusual secret agreement with a U.N. agency will allow Iran to use its own experts to inspect a site allegedly used to develop nuclear arms, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil critics who argue the deal is built on trust of the Iranians.

The investigation of the Parchin military site by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of nuclear weapons allegations.

Interesting that they—or author George Jahn—evidently didn't allow a copy editor to look at the text long enough to close the quotation marks in the first paragraph, or uncontract the "it's", which I don't think is AP style (though their style guide seems not to be too specific on that score). You suppose it's (I use contractions freely, as you know) because inside every copy editor is a fact checker screaming to be let out?

It is a somewhat unsatisfactory correction for a couple of reasons:

Parchin

Updated 8/22/2015

These people know what they're doing. Image via Nima Shirazi.

Just a quicky backgrounder on the Iran scandale du jour—

#IsraeltheRegion #Iran #Parchin #Irannucleardeal UN to let Iran inspect its own alleged nuclear activity site http://t.co/6JUEhpWHUn

— Israel News (@IsraelNewsNow) August 19, 2015

—based on information posted last Sunday at the Arms Control Law blog from Dr. Yousaf Butt, nuclear physicist and senior scientific advisor to the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in London:

1. The alleged research IAEA wants to check out at the Parchin site, involving the testing of conventional, not nuclear, explosives, was done if it was done at all before 2005; so the fear that the Iranians are suddenly hustling to clean it up is not quite realistic, and if it's about nuclear research that would be nuclear research that they gave up 12 or 13 years ago, not any active program.

Aipac up your troubles

Portrait of mask and actor. Uncredited illustration from notes by William A. Johnson, University of Cincinnati.

Martin Indyk on NPR this morning (audio here) explained the Israel-Iran situation in a way that really made me understand the Israeli position better—not Netanyahu's position in particular, but the very broad position of everybody, basically, that isn't a dove.

He's talking about Iran's reaching the "threshold" of ability to build a nuclear weapon, [jump]