The Washington Post interviewed Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak over the weekend, and he said the Iranians are not only farther along in the development of nuclear weapons than many want to believe, they are also probably running a second secret uranium enrichment program: A Conversation With Ehud Barak.

Q. You were critical of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

A. Our interpretation is that clearly the Iranians are aiming at nuclear capability. It’s probably true that … they may have slowed down the weapons group in 2003, because it was the height of American militarism… . We think that they are quite advanced, much beyond the level of the Manhattan Project. We suspect they are probably already working on warheads for ground-to-ground missiles … [and] that probably they have another clandestine enrichment operation beyond the one in Natanz.

What kind?

The dots that we see … cannot be easily connected in a way that does not lead to a nuclear program… . The leading intelligence communities should concentrate on finding whether there is … a clandestine enrichment operation and a weapons group working on the weapons technology.

Do you think the Americans will fail to take action as a result of the National Intelligence Estimate?

Clearly the NIE reduced the enthusiasm even for tougher sanctions. Basically, in strategic terms, we face a triad of challenges: one, radical Muslim terror; two, nuclear proliferation; and [three] rogue states.

To deal with such threats … we need a much deeper and more intimate cooperation between the United States, the E.U., Russia and China. And this needs a paradigm shift in the way we approach China and Russia.