The harder they Qom

In retrospect, the Qom file explains a lot about the events of the past week in New York. It explains the big smile on Barack Obama's face after his meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, and Medvedev's admission that sometimes sanctions are inevitable. It explains Nicolas Sarkozy's and Gordon Brown's passionate public speeches denouncing Iran in the Security Council on Thursday. They knew the next morning's news would make them look prescient.
The nature of the intelligence coup may also explain why Angela Merkel preferred to have breakfast on Friday morning with Dmitry rather than join Barack, Nicolas and Gordon on stage. It was humiliating for Germany and the BND intelligence service to be left out in the cold, informed at the last moment along with the Russians and Chinese.
The implications of the Qom discovery are still being thrashed out.
On ArmsControlWonk.com, Andreas Persbo of the arms control group VERTIC makes an interesting point. If the uranium hexafluoride for the Qom enrichment plant had come from the conversion plant in Isfahan, its diversion would almost certainly have been spotted by the IAEA. So for the Qom scam to work, there would have to be a parallel conversion plant somewhere - a complete shadow fuel cycle.
All this makes the Geneva meeting on Thursday all the more of showdown. The Russian statement makes it clear that Moscow sees it as a decisive for Iran.
There seems little doubt that if Iran continues to stonewall, there is another wave of sanctions coming, but there is a lot of argument yet to be had over what kind of sanctions. The original idea of cutting off supplies of petrol is looking less attractive with every passing day. It would be a smugglers charter along the northern border, just as it was in Iraq. European officials also fear it would be used as an excuse by Tehran to cut petrol subsidies and blame the West. Plus, as the Financial Times has reported, China has just captured a big chunk of Iranian petrol market.