Russian nuclear assistance to Iran. (Insider Report).

"As Aeroflot Flight 515 from Moscow begins its predawn descent into Teheran, the group of middle-aged Russian experts on board begins to fill out landing cards for Iran," begins a June 21st Christian Science Monitor report. "Pulling out dog-eared, still-valid Soviet passports, the men write down their profession -- engineer -- and their destination: Bushehr, the city on the Persian Gulf that is home to Iran's nuclear-power project -- and to 1,000 Russian engineers and technicians."

Immensely wealthy in both oil and natural gas, Iran insists that the Bushehr project is devoted to peaceful energy production. There is reason to suspect otherwise. One U.S. official quoted by the Monitor notes that Russia is helping Iranian scientists master "the nuclear-fuel cycle, and some critical technologies like sophisticated metal alloys and laser isotope separation techniques ... involved in building the bomb. ... There's enough to see a pattern of determined Iranian effort that has unfortunately struck positive responses from some Russian entities."

During the late 1990s, the Clinton administration expressed concerns about the potential transfer of weapon-making expertise from Russia to Iran. However, notes the above-quoted official, "When some sensitive information was passed [by the Clinton administration] to the Russians" to document those concerns, "they [the Russians] didn't stop the activity, but they stopped the leak. That leads to great reticence to blow any more sources."

The Monitor, following standard media practice, reports that Russia teems with desperately poor nuclear scientists, and insists that Russia's law enforcement organs have a difficult time keeping track of them. Commenting on what the Monitor described as "the murky role of Russia's security services," the anonymous official pointed out that Russia's intelligence community is quite capable of impeding unauthorized transfers of nuclear expertise: "If their security is as effective as they claim it to be, and we think it is, they should be able to track these things down. They know who is flying on Aeroflot to Teheran."