Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak appeared on CNN yesterday to be interviewed by anchor Christiane Amanpour. In a sometimes contentious interview, Amanpour focused mostly on the Iranian nuclear program. Despite agreement that a potential nuclear armed Iran would constitute a threat, a slight rift opened up last week between the U.S. and Israeli administrations over the first new round of talks between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany.

Amanpour dove into Iran issues and commented on Barak’s repeated references to Iran’s “military nuclear program.” Amanpour cited reports about American intelligence estimates which — along with Israeli and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates — doesn’t conclude that Iran has decided on building a weapon. “You’re obviously very concerned, and so are many, should Iran get a nuclear capability that’s military. As I said, the U.S. does not believe any such decision has been made,” she said. Barak shot back: “No, no, no. The — I want to correct you.” He didn’t, however, contradict what she said, but rather added to it his own assessment:

BARAK: I’m talking to the American intelligence. I’ve talked to American leaders. There is no difference in the assessment of intelligence. It’s true that probably [Iranian Supreme Leader] Khamenei did not give an order to start building a weapon or a device.

But why he’s doing this, just because he understands that if he starts to break the IAEA and start to actually build a weapon, he might find himself faced with an American response, Israeli response or whoever, in a way that might damage him. And that’s the only reason why he did not give the order. But they’re clearly heading toward this objective.

AMANPOUR: But if that’s the case, then, then surely the pressure is working, that they’re not doing it, as you said, because the pressure is there and the threat of what you might do.

BARAK: These are quite effective sanctions. But it’s still far away from working.

Watch the video:

Barak is right to say that sanctions have not worked, as such, because Iran has yet to answer many questions from the IAEA about its past activities and allow unfettered access to sites on the IAEA’s list — both points Barak made. But Barak’s conclusion, which buttressed Amanpour’s point, is also correct: pressure is having an effect, as evinced by Iran’s willingness to come to the table and engage — albeit on what will almost certainly be a rocky path. President Obama has vowed to keep all options on the table and limits the window for successful negotiations, which his administration considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis.

Barak’s comments that sanctions “are quite effective” track with those of Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, who said earlier this month that the sanctions track is “much more effective than people think and it might change, hopefully it might change behavior patterns if we continue with it.”

President Obama has fallen under attack from the Republican National Committee and the GOP presidential candidates after a live microphone picked up a private conversation in which he asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” and “patience” on the missile defense issue until after November’s election.

Today, Obama hit back at his critics. “I think everybody understands — if they don’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — that I want to reduce nuclear stockpiles,” Obama said today. “And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues. And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball,” said Obama, in remarks delivered on the final day of the nuclear security summit in South Korea.

Obama took on his critics’ charges that his comments to Medvedev showed weakness on nuclear security and pointed to the political realities of the campaign season as severely limiting his ability to move forward on major policy initiatives, telling reporters:

[T]he only way I get this stuff done is if I’m consulting with the Pentagon, with Congress, if I’ve got bipartisan support, and frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations.

I think the stories you guys have been writing over the last 24 hours [about the open mic incident] is pretty good evidence of that.

Yet the GOP will try to make something out of Obama’s rather innocuous comments. Hours after Obama’s exchange with Medvedev, the Republican National Committee produced a new video asking “what else is on Obama’s agenda after the election that he isn’t telling you?” and Mitt Romney said of Obama and his open mic comments, “I don’t think he can recover from it, to tell you the truth.”

A new poll released yesterday showed Americans exhibiting strong support for the U.S. and its partners “continuing to pursue negotiations with Iran” over the country’s disputed nuclear program. Released by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the University of Maryland, the poll (PDF) found that nearly seven in ten Americans favored continuing diplomacy, with just a quarter opting for an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

To the right is a chart of two of the report’s key findings, American support for diplomacy and working Iran issues through international fora at the United Nations.

As part of the Obama administration’s dual-track policy toward Iran — crippling pressure and negotiations aimed at attaining the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff with a diplomatic deal — the U.S. garnered support at the U.N. Security council for sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and at the U.N. Human Rights Council for a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran that has condemned Iranian abuses.

While poll respondents took a pessimistic view of Iran’s nuclear program and Western efforts to block it — a vast majority thought Iran will eventually develop a nuclear weapon — their views on the matter, at times, diverged from conclusions drawn from publicly available evidence and statements by top American security officials. For instance, 58 percent of respondents thought Iran has decided on producing a weapon and is actually working toward that aim. But, despite “serious concerns,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent report contains no such assertions.

Furthermore, reports about American intelligence estimates — as well as statements by top U.S. military and intelligence officials — indicate that they don’t think Iran has chosen to produce a bomb.

However, majorities of Americans think the U.S. should discourage allies from militarily attacking Iran. This may be due to perceived negative consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. More than half of poll respondents thought bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would either strengthen the position of the Iranian regime among the country’s population, or have no effect at all on its popularity. Responding to a question about the effects of a strike on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 42 percent of those surveyed said Iran’s program would be delayed for less than five years. Only 18 percent thought Iran’s program would be delayed longer than that, and 22 percent thought Iran’s nuclear program would be accelerated as a result of an attack.

However, Obama administration’s policy still deems Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon unacceptable — an Iranian bomb would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies and interests — and keeps all options on the table to avert it. But as Obama has said, “a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better.”

On the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes, former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan expanded on excerpts of his interview aired earlier this week and declared that an Israeli attack on Iran could spark a “regional war” and would only delay Iran’s nuclear program — with the latter assessment being shared by U.S.-based military analysts and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

In excerpts from the interview reported last week, Dagan called the Iranian regime “rational” and added that “an attack on Iran before you’re exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it.” Last night, the full exchange revealed the thinking behind Dagan’s comments.

He expounded on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran: that it could embolden the Islamic Republic to foment instability, and that some of Iran’s leaders “have said they want to destroy Israel.” But he added that the issue was “an international problem.” Citing President Obama’s stating “openly that the military option is on the table,” Dagan said he would “prefer that Americans will do it” — but only if it comes down to that. Dagan, whom CBS reporter Leslie Stahl said had a “44-year resume as an effective killing machine,” instead urged restraint and said there was “more time” to run the pressure and engagement tracks.

Dagan outlined the some of the costs and limited benefits of launching an attack now on Iran’s nuclear program:

DAGAN: We are going to ignite, at least from my point of view, a regional war. And wars, you know how they start. You never know how you are ending it…

It will be a devastating impact on our ability to continue with our daily life. I think that Israel will be in a very serious situation for quite a time.

[...]

STAHL: You said, “There’s no military attack that can halt the Iranian nuclear project. It could only delay it.”

DAGAN: Yes, I agree.

Watch a video of the exchange:

Dagan said that Iran is “maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western thinking, but no doubt that they are considering all the implications of their action.” That assertion tracks with what the top U.S. military officer, top U.S. intelligence officer, and President Obama have said about the Iranian regime: that it operates on a cost-benefit analysis based on its interests, and can therefore be dissuaded from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Top U.S. intelligence and defense officials don’t think Iran has made a decision to pursue a bomb. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not conclude that Iran was building a bomb in its latest report on the program last month, despite warning about “serious concerns” that it is on a nuclear weapons track.

Last month, delivering a speech to the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama ruled out containment of a nuclear-armed Iran, warning that an Iranian bomb posed a threat to the U.S. and its allies, as well as the international non-proliferation regime. But his administration thinks a negotiated, diplomatic end to the crisis was the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff.

In the latest of its quarterly reports on the Iranian nuclear program (PDF), the U.N. nuclear watchdog said that Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment capacity and has not provided IAEA inspectors with an explanation for a significant quantity of missing nuclear material.

The report, which comes on the heels of two days of talks between International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and Iranian officials, details how IAEA personnel were denied access to the Parchin military facility and failed to get answers about the role of foreign experts in Iran’s nuclear research:

The Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.

The new report reiterated the IAEA’s concerns — stated at length in its Novermber 2011 report — about Iranian non-compliance, particularly as it relates to possible nuclear weapons work, referring again to “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.”

“There’s nothing that’s really unexpected,” said Peter Crail, a nonproliferation analyst with the Arms Control Association, in an interview with ThinkProgress. The Iranians are “sort of steadily moving ahead.”

He noted that though latest generation centrifuges were reported as installed for the first time, they were in early stages of development and Iran appeared to still be tinkering with earlier generation centrifuges. “This (report) was more of a standard update of where the program is,” he said. “As expected, they are still making progress in installing things, but there’s no massive expansion or breakthrough development.”

While the IAEA again raised concerns about lack of access, expanding production, and a quantity of unaccounted for nuclear material, the report doesn’t indicate Iran is any closer to deciding on building a nuclear weapon. The absence of such an assertion is in line with reported U.S. intelligence estimates and statements by top military and intelligence officials.

Since the November report, the greatest change in Iran’s nuclear program, according to inspectors, has been the stepped up enrichment of uranium. The Natanz nuclear facility is now operating 52 cascades — each containing 170 centrifuges — up from 37 in November, and the Fordow facility is now refining Uranium to a 20% concentration with almost 700 centrifuges.

In January, Iran informed the IAEA of revisions in its intentions at the Fordow enrichment plant to include enrichment to 5 percent, in addition to the 20 percent enrichment that can be more easily upgraded to weapons-grade fissile material. “I’m not clear exactly what that means,” said ACA’s Crail. “But if Fordow isn’t dedicated only to 20 percent (enrichment), it also may suggest that they are willing to halt 20 percent because they are hedging with the facility by doing two types of production.”

The IAEA also raised concerns about 19.8 kilograms of unaccounted for uranium “related to conversion experiments carried out by Iran between 1995 and 2002.” The discrepancy in measurement amounts was previously reported, but Iran again refused to answer questions about the missing quantity. Asked in the February meetings between the IAEA and Iran, the new report said, Iran stonewalled:

Iran indicated that it no longer possessed the relevant documentation and that the personnel involved were no longer available… The discrepancy remains to be clarified.

Diplomats told the Associated Press the quantity could be enough to work on weapons. ACA’s Crail said, however, it wasn’t “nearly enough” yet to actually make a bomb, though “because it’s in uranium metal form it may be useful for carrying out warhead R&D (research and development).”

The report will likely raise tensions between Iran and the West over the former’s nuclear progress, which it insists is for peaceful purposes.

Republicans often criticize President Obama for not hewing exactly to advice from top military leaders (a criticism those military leaders find “offensive“). But when it has suited their agendas, those very same Republicans have themselves not shied away from publicly disagreeing with top uniformed military officials.

In September, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined colleagues to criticize Obama for failing to offer a plan for Iraq that “reflects the best military advice of U.S. commanders.”

But Graham isn’t always so willing to listen to top American military officials. Last week the South Carolina Republican disagreed publicly with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s assessment that Iran hasn’t decided on whether it will build a nuclear bomb.

This weekend on CNN, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey spoke out against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the immediate future and added that the pressure and diplomacy tracks should be pursued because the Joint Chiefs “are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor.” Once again, Graham shot back, saying yesterday on CNN that he disagreed with the top U.S. military officer:

GRAHAM: But you know, General Dempsey is a fine man. But when he said that he thought the Iranians were rational actors, I just want to go on record. I don’t think it’s rational for a country to try to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in a restaurant in Washington.

I don’t see what Iran is doing is being rational. I see it as being dangerous and so that’s why we need to make sure Syria ends well.

Watch the video:

The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington indeed represents a threat — one Clapper outlined. But Graham is missing the larger picture. Last month, Clapper said in his congressional testimony that Iran’s decision — yet unmade, according to reliable media organizations, U.N. agencies and reported U.S. intelligence estimates — to build a nuclear weapon or not “would be based on a cost-benefit analysis.” Clapper went on to give several examples of factors that could influence this cost-benefit analysis, such as economic and diplomatic pressure.

While Republican politicians should be free to criticize opinions expressed by military officers, they ought to cut out the hypocrisy of insisting on Obama’s fealty to military advice when jettisoning the officers’ opinions on topics where they disagree with the brass.

A powerful member of the House Armed Services Committee spread false accusations against President Obama’s nuclear weapons reduction policy, claiming on a conservative radio show yesterday that no other countries in the world would join the United States in reducing their nuclear arsenal.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) made the allegation while appearing on Secure Freedom Radio hosted by Frank Gaffney, one of the nation’s leading Islamophobes profiled in the Center for American Progress report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.

Gaffney asked Turner if the real reason President Obama wanted to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world is because “this is a radical ideologue at work?” Turner agreed, going on to declare that during Obama’s tenure, the United States would be the “only country” that would reduce its nuclear arsenal. He concluded by dissembling about the New START treaty, an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, by claiming that Russia would “not [be] required to lower their number at all”:

GAFFNEY: We have a president who is genuinely a radical ideologue when it comes to these things. [...] Is it not a better explanation that in fact it is the same thing we see so dramatically at work with the idea that we might reduce our nuclear arsenal to the level of Pakistan’s that really this is a radical ideologue at work?

TURNER: Right. And this is not about the budget. We’re not going to see significant savings from this. [...] It’s interesting, the president in Prague made a speech that was supposed to be a cornerstone of his presidency, where he called for a world without nuclear weapons and the road to zero. In his presidency, he will only have achieved eliminating our nuclear weapons. If you put a scoreboard on the wall, and you put the countries that have nuclear weapons or are pursuing nuclear weapons, and you start with the Obama presidency and the numbers of inventory they had, and then you get to his reelection campaign and put the numbers they have at the end, the only country on that board that’s going to have a lower number is the United States. In START, Russia was not required to lower their number at all.

Listen to it:

During the New START ratification debate back in 2010, Republicans regularly tried to float this false claim that the treaty wouldn’t force Russia to reduce its nuclear weapons. As the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation wrote, “The treaty enhances U.S. security by verifiably reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles.” And the State Department fact sheet on the treaty notes that the limit for deployed warheads for both countries “is 74 percent lower than the limit of the 1991 START Treaty and 30 percent lower than the upper deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.”

One expert called claims that Russia won’t have to limit its nukes “ridiculous.” “That’s the whole purpose of the treaty, to reduce the number of warheads,” said Robert Norris of the National Resources Defense Council.

The Obama administration is now reportedly considering reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal further and Republicans, like Turner, are doing anything they can to prevent it, even if it includes making claims about America’s treaty obligations and nuclear security that have no basis in reality. But as CAP’s Lawrence Korb and Alex Rothman noted this week, “the Pentagon’s own strategic thinkers have noted that the strategic landscape has changed and that the U.S.’s Cold War-sized arsenal may exceed the country’s current needs.”

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, repeated his position that Iran has not yet decided whether to develop a nuclear weapon. Clapper, both in his prepared remarks [PDF] and in an exchange with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), emphasized that sanctions and diplomacy were the best option for stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and that Iran’s decision making is guided by a a rational “cost-benefit approach.”

Graham — who is currently spearheading a resolution limiting President Obama’s policy options on Iran — tried to push Clapper into acknowledging that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, but the top U.S. intelligence official failed to agree, leading Graham to disagree with the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear intentions:

LINDSEY GRAHAM: You have doubt about the Iranian’s intention when it comes to making a nuclear weapon?

JAMES CLAPPER: I do.

GRAHAM: So you’re not sure they’re trying to make a bomb? [...]

CLAPPER: I think they’re keeping themselves in a position to make that decision but there are certain things they have not yet done and have not done for some time. [...]

GRAHAM: I guess my point is that I take a different view. I’m very convinced they’re going down the road of developing a nuclear weapon.

Watch it:

In his prepared testimony, Clapper emphasized that Iran’s decisionmaking could be influenced by outside inducements and pressures, much as any other nation state evaluates its interests and security, saying:

We judge Iran’s nuclear decisionmaking is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran. Iranian leaders undoubtedly consider Iran’s security, prestige, and influence, as well as the international political and security environment, when making decisions about its nuclear program.

Clapper acknowledged that Iran’s technical advancements strengthen the assessment that Iran has the capability to eventually produce a nuclear weapon, a view which falls in line with the IAEA’s findings that Iran’s nuclear program has potential military dimensions.

Referring to the new U.S. sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), Clapper observed that while economic difficulties “probably will not jeopardize the regime,” CBI sanctions “will have a greater impact on Iran than previous U.S. [sanctions].”