We already knew as much, of course, but now it’s official.

United Nations weapons inspectors released a trove of new evidence on Tuesday that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way…

The report laid out the case that Iran had moved far beyond the blackboard to create computer models of nuclear explosions in 2008 and 2009 and conducted experiments on nuclear triggers. It said the simulations focused on how shock waves from conventional explosives could compress the spherical fuel at the core of a nuclear device — the signature of implosion.

The report also said Iran went beyond such theoretical studies to build a large containment vessel at its Parchin military base, starting in 2000, for testing the experimental feasibility of such explosive compression. It called such experiments “strong indicators of possible weapon development.”…

The report corroborates the conclusion of a much-debated classified National Intelligence Estimate issued in 2007 that Iran had dismantled a highly focused effort to build a bomb in late 2003. The new report describes recent work conducted in a less coordinated manner.

Yeah, funny how that story changed. In 2007 we were told the Bush Administration had been overreacting to Iran’s program, with Democrats using the NIE to vindicate their argument that he was just rushing off to another senseless war.

Now we find out four years later that stopping a pursuit of nuclear weapons didn’t really mean stopping a pursuit of nuclear weapons. It just meant that pursuit was less orderly, or something. Which would have been nice to know, oh say, four years ago.

Allahpundit:

 The significance of today’s report isn’t the new information in it — on the contrary, the claims that Iran got help from Russian scientists and A.Q. Khan were as predictable as proliferation news gets — but simply that it’s the IAEA instead of those cowboys at the CIA that’s issuing it. They’re supposed to be the more sober, credible agency after the fiasco over Iraqi WMDs, but they were in the tank for Iran for years thanks to Mohammed ElBaradei, who saw himself more as a “secular pope” tasked with preventing war than as a guy charged with simply reporting on who was doing what with uranium.

Indeed, the IAEA are supposedly the more cautious willing to give benefit of the doubt. But not anymore. Even they have to admit the Islamic Republic of Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Now the question is what the western world does about it.