One result of the Iraq war has been the commonplace assertion that western intelligence can’t be trusted. Agencies collect information which is unreliable and open to manipulation by political leaders bent on war.

When it was established that Saddam’s regime did not possess weapons of mass destruction, many critics of George Bush and Tony Blair reminded us that the UN’s own weapons inspectors never provided any grounds to think otherwise (actually, they didn’t provide a definitive assessment either way - and that ambiguity was deliberately stoked by the Ba’athists.) Now, when Iran is under the spotlight, a similar ambiguity prevails, although this time the UN agency in question, the IAEA, sounds decidedly uncomfortable. Their latest report suggests that Iran just might be building a nuclear weapon:

Iran has steadfastly blocked a U.N. investigation into allegations it tried to make nuclear arms and the probe is now deadlocked, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday.

The conclusion was contained in an IAEA report released to 35-nation IAEA board and the U.N. Security Council, which has already imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear defiance.

“We’ve arrived at a gridlock,” said a senior U.N. official, describing the document as “a progress report without progress.” He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the restricted report, made available to The Associated Press.

Since its last report in May, “the agency … has not been able to make any substantive progress,” the IAEA report said, calling the impasse a matter of “serious concern.”

The document said Iran has now amassed a third of the amount of enriched uranium it could reprocess into the material for the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.

And then:

Ali-Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the IAEA, asserted there was nothing for the agency to investigate as far as weapons programs were concerned.

“The Americans did a lousy job with the CIA and associated terrorist groups that work with them,” he told the AP, alluding to Iranian claims that the American intelligence pointing to past Iranian weapons programs was forged.

However, this time - make careful note - it’s the IAEA which is challenging this hogwash:

The report confirmed Iran continues to expand its uranium enrichment program in defiance of the three sets of U.N. sanctions.

The document said Iran was now either fully or partially operating nearly 4,000 centrifuges at its cavernous underground facility at Natanz. Beyond those machines, which spin uranium gas into enriched uranium, it was testing 12 more advanced prototypes at its above-ground experimental site at Natanz, a city about 300 miles south of Tehran.

To date, Iran had produced about 1,000 pounds of low enriched uranium suitable for nuclear fuel, said the report. Asked to put that figure into context, U.N. officials said Iran would need three times that amount to be begin the process of enriching to the level needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

Running smoothly, 3,000 centrifuges could produce enough nuclear material for a bomb within 18 months.

Iran’s refusal to end enrichment has been the main trigger for sanctions and continues to be the overriding concern for the United States and others who suspect the program is aimed at making weapons.

If Iran continues to block investigators, the IAEA “will not be able to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran,” said the report.

There is no reason to believe that Iran will agree to transparency any time soon. Meanwhile, there is every reason to believe that Iran’s strategic ambiguity cannot be sustained indefinitely to ward off a pre-emptive strike.