IAEA Report on Iran

Andy Grotto has an informative post over at Arms Control Wonk on the recently released IAEA report on Iran. Although the report itself is mildly comforting, the peculiar timing of the documents produced by Iran and, moreover, the past trend of Iranian behavior is still rather puzzling and therefore somewhat unsettling. There's a good discussion in the comments section and I think commenter Hass makes a very keen observation, which I largely agree with:

This isn't about nukes or nuclear power — if it was then the US would have accepted Iran's various proposals including the Iranian offer to suspend enrichment and the 2003 peace feeler. This is about regime change, and the nuclear issue presents a good pretext. The Iranians have come to believe that no matter what they do, even if they accept the UNSC suspension and even if the IAEA gives Iran a clean bill of health, something else will be ginned up. That's not an irrational conclusion.