Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Network of Militants Is Robust After Mumbai Siege - The New York Times





http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/asia/30mumbai.html?th&emc=th

New York Times




Network of Militants Is Robust After Mumbai Siege

David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
An Indian soldier took cover as the Taj Mahal hotel burned during a gun battle between Indian military and militants inside the hotel in Mumbai in November 2008.
Published: September 29, 2009
KARACHI, Pakistan — Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and intelligence officials.

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Times Topics: Lashkar-e-Taiba

Mohsin Raza/Reuters
Hafiz Saeed in May.
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
A Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is said to have organized the Mumbai attacks in Millat Town, a suburb of Karachi. Hammad Amin Sadiq, described in a Pakistani dossier as a committed militant, was seen by neighbors riding around the streets on his motorbike.
Roshan Mughal/Associated Press, 2008
Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, center, known as the chief of operations for Lashkar, is among those the Pakistani authorities have arrested.
Sebastian D’souza/Mumbai Mirror, via Associated Press, 2008
According to an Indian document, Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving gunman, implicated Hafiz Saeed in the Mumbai attack.
Roshan Mughal/Associated Press
Pakistani authorities have arrested seven men linked to the Mumbai attack, including Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

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Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai, India’s financial capital, last November.
Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan. It included four houses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks.
Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others begin their formal trial on Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders.
Indeed, Lashkar’s broader network endures, and can be mobilized quickly for elaborate attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the United States, Europe, India and Pakistan.
In interviews with The Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar’s capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.
Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligencedirectorate, or ISI, helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Pakistani officials say that after Sept. 11, 2001, they broke their contacts with the group. No credible evidence has emerged of Pakistani government involvement in the Mumbai attacks, according to an American law enforcement official.
But a senior American intelligence official said the ISI was believed to maintain ties with Lashkar. Four Lashkar members, interviewed individually, said only a thin distance separated Lashkar and the ISI, bridged by former ISI and military officials.
One highly placed Lashkar militant said the Mumbai attackers were part of groups trained by former Pakistani military and intelligence officials at Lashkar camps. Others had direct knowledge that retired army and ISI officials trained Lashkar recruits as late as last year.
“Some people of the ISI knew about the plan and closed their eyes,” said one senior Lashkar operative in Karachi who said he had met some of the gunmen before they left for the Mumbai assault, though he did not know what their mission would be.
The intelligence officials interviewed insisted on anonymity while discussing classified information. The current and former Lashkar militants did not want their names used for fear of antagonizing others in the group or Pakistani authorities.
But by all accounts Lashkar’s network, though dormant, remains alive, and the possibility that it could strike India again makes Lashkar a wild card in one of the most volatile regions of the world.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they were created by the bloody partition of British India in 1947. Whether they begin again the long journey toward peace or find themselves eyeball to eyeball, nuclear arms at the ready, depends in no small measure on the actions of this shadowy group.
A new attack could reverberate widely through the region and revive nagging questions about Pakistan’s commitment to stamp out the militant groups that use its territory.
It could also dangerously complicate the Obama administration’s efforts in Afghanistan. Success there depends in part on avoiding open conflict between India and Pakistan, so that Pakistan’s military can focus on battling the Taliban insurgents who base themselves in Pakistan.
Even so, American diplomatic efforts to improve India-Pakistan relations have been stillborn. So delicate is the Kashmir issue that Indian officials bridle at any hint of American mediation.
Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the two sides failed to restart talks last weekend, with India demanding greater steps by Pakistan to prosecute those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.
The dossiers show that at the level of the police, the two countries can cooperate, and have exchanged DNA evidence, photographs and items found with the attackers to piece together a detailed portrait of the Mumbai plot.
But the files are laced with barbs and recriminations, reflecting the increasingly acid tenor of their relations. Despite pledges to work together to fight terrorism, the Pakistani and Indian intelligence services are not on speaking terms, according to officials in both countries and the United States.
The gaps heighten the risks of a new attack substantially, American officials fear.
“The only cooperation we have with the Pakistanis is that they send us their terrorists, who kill our people, and we kill their terrorists,” a senior Indian intelligence official said in an interview.
Asked how much his agency communicated with its Indian counterpart, a senior Pakistani intelligence official made an O with his thumb and forefinger.
“Zero,” he replied.
Brazen Planning
The Pakistani investigation concludes “beyond any reasonable doubt” that it was Lashkar militants who carried out the Mumbai attacks, preying on their victims in a train station, two five-star hotels, a cafe and a Jewish center over three days starting last Nov. 26.
According to testimony by the only surviving attacker, Ajmal Kasab, 22, Lashkar recruits were vetted and trained around the country, including at well-established camps in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, as well as in Mansehra, in North-West Frontier Province.
A core group, the 10 chosen for the Mumbai assault, was eventually moved to Karachi and its suburbs, where the real drilling began and where Pakistani investigators later retraced the plotters’ steps.
Beginning as early as May 2008, the group trained and planned brazenly while living in various neighborhoods in and around Karachi. They made scores of calls using cellphones, some with stolen numbers, starting in August. They set up voice lines over the Internet.
At one water sports shop, they bought inflatable boats, air pumps, life jackets and engines. One of their training camps, with five thatched rooms and a three-room house, was located near a creek, where they conducted water drills in the open.
The police later recovered an abundance of evidence: militant literature, pocket diaries, spent and live ammunition, empty gun magazines, life vests and receipts for supplies, including distributed weapons and explosives, the Pakistani dossier says.
At the other camp, which they named Azizabad, the group and their trainers set up a classroom.
Using handwritten manuals, the recruits were trained how to use cellphones to keep in contact with their handlers during the attack. They pored over detailed maps of the Indian coastline, plotting the course they would take to Mumbai. They learned how to use global positioning devices.
Working from Millat Town, a dusty, middle-class Karachi suburb on the eastern edge of the city, Mr. Sadiq organized the cadre. Neighbors described him as quiet and pious, riding around the streets with his two young sons perched on his motorbike. The Pakistani dossier says he was a committed Lashkar militant.
In an interview, his uncle, Lala Yasin, said the same thing, adding proudly that Mr. Sadiq was willing to do anything to liberate Kashmir from India’s grip.
“Lashkar-e-Taiba does not kill people without reason,” Mr. Yasin said at his home in Karachi, a few blocks from where his nephew planned the Mumbai attacks.
“It is the champion of jihad,” he explained. “Muslims are like a body and if one part of your body is aching, the entire body may be jeopardized.”
A Limited Crackdown
Pakistani authorities have arrested seven men linked to the Mumbai attack, including Mr. Sadiq and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a man well known as the chief of operations for Lashkar. They are searching for at least 13 other suspects.
But their investigation has come up short of the founder of Lashkar, Hafiz Saeed, the man Indian and Western officials accuse of masterminding the attacks.
In June, a Pakistani court freed Mr. Saeed from detention, declaring that it did not have enough evidence to hold him.
Under continuing pressure, Pakistani authorities this month confined his movements once again. But they say they have no new evidence against him.
Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, said that there was simply not enough evidence to charge Mr. Saeed with a crime, and that all the evidence pointed to Mr. Lakhvi as the mastermind.
“Lakhvi was the head, and that is why he has been taken into custody,” Mr. Malik said in an interview. “He has been charged and now they are all under trial.”
Indian officials say they have sent Pakistan a six-page summary of evidence of Mr. Saeed’s complicity in the Mumbai attacks, a copy of which was given to The Times. The document, based on India’s own intelligence and testimony from Mr. Kasab, quotes Mr. Saeed giving detailed instructions to the group that carried out the attack.
“One Hindustani boat has to be hijacked for going to Bombay from Karachi,” the document says, using Mumbai’s former name. Mr. Saeed also told the group that it should aim to begin the assault around 7:30 p.m.
“At this hour there is considerable crowd at the places of our target,” the document quotes him as saying.
Pakistani officials and legal experts say the evidence is not as clear-cut as India says. The case against Mr. Saeed rests almost entirely on the testimony of Mr. Kasab, the surviving attacker, and serious questions remain about the way the Indian police obtained his statements, they say.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the organization Mr. Saeed now leads, bills itself as a charity and denies any links with Lashkar. Abdur Rahman Makki, Mr. Saeed’s deputy and brother-in-law, called any accusations against Mr. Saeed baseless.
“I do not think that there is anything left to talk about after the High Court’s decision that Hafez Saeed has no link to the Mumbai incident,” he said in an interview.
Yet he was not shy about admitting that Mr. Saeed, a fiery preacher, regularly exhorted young people to fight in Kashmir. “Hafiz Saeed always speaks and discusses about the jihad that is mentioned in the Holy Koran,” Mr. Makki said. “Not only Pakistanis, any Muslim has the duty to support the oppressed Kashmiris.”
All parts of India where Muslims are a majority must be freed, he said.
Meanwhile, despite promises to crack down on terrorists, Pakistan’s government has taken few concrete steps.
The former director of Pakistan’s elite national investigative force was appointed to lead the country’s new counterterrorism body in January. But it took seven months to get any money to get the agency moving, and only now is it beginning to hire staff members and flesh out its mission, law enforcement officials said.
Cracking down on Lashkar and other groups linked to the Kashmir struggle, and who do not explicitly seek to overthrow Pakistan’s government, was not urgent, they said.
“I have many other things that are higher priority now,” said one senior police official in Punjab, the province where DNA tests pinpointed the families of the Mumbai attackers, according to the dossier. “Why would a case in Mumbai be so important when Pakistan is the front line of the war on terror?”
Links to Intelligence Agencies
For Pakistani authorities, the political problems posed by arresting Mr. Saeed, or undertaking a broader crackdown on Lashkar, may outstrip the legal ones.
The organization and its cause — to “free” Kashmir — remain close to the hearts of the Pakistani public as well as the military and intelligence establishment.
Since the Mumbai attacks, “our funds increased and more people wanted to join us,” a senior Lashkar operative in Karachi said in an interview. A midlevel ISI officer told The Times this year that Lashkar’s membership extended to 150,000 people.
Despite official denials, Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, maintains links to Lashkar, though the current level of support remains murky, according to the senior American intelligence official interviewed by The Times, as well as Pakistani analysts, retired military officials and former Lashkar members.
“Hafiz Saeed is the army’s man,” said Najam Sethi, an analyst and newspaper editor in Lahore, Pakistan. He and other analysts said the ISI was in no hurry to discard a group it helped create for a covert war against India.
“They have not abandoned it altogether,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore. “It is not a total reversal; it is a realization that this is not advisable at this time.”
Senior ISI officials disputed the view. While acknowledging that the ISI had worked closely with Lashkar-e-Taiba in the past, they said things were different now.
“Prior to 9/11, we had a very strong contact with L.E.T., even on the leadership level,” one senior Pakistani intelligence official said in an interview. “But after 9/11, we broke our contacts with not only L.E.T. but also the Taliban.”
“Today we think that it would have been better if we had not cut our ties with them the way we did,” the official added, “so that we could control them more.”
A senior Lashkar militant said the group was divided — with the operational wing, led by Mr. Lakhvi, chafing for more attacks on India, and the spiritual wing, led by Mr. Saeed, advocating a more cautious approach.
The senior Pakistani intelligence official said that some within Lashkar might aspire to a more ambitious agenda, and suggested that parts of the group might have acted on their own.
“Lashkar went rogue,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. “Perhaps L.E.T. or dissident factions wanted to emerge as a global player,” like Al Qaeda.
New Attacks Expected
Even as new details emerge about the Mumbai attacks, senior American military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials express grim certainty that Lashkar is plotting new attacks.
The United States warned Indian officials this year about a Mumbai-style attack by Lashkar against multiple sites in India, according to a senior Defense Department official and a senior American counterterrorism official.
The counterterrorism official said the information, gleaned from electronic intercepts and other sources, was not specific and apparently did not result in any arrests. But it was significant enough for American officials to alert their Indian counterparts.
“There were indications of possible terrorist activity in the run-up to the Indian elections,” in May, “and that information was shared promptly with Indian officials,” said the counterterrorism official.
Pakistani officials, however, say they have been kept in the dark. “We heard that the Americans have warned the Indians that something in Mumbai might happen, but no one informed us,” a senior Pakistani intelligence official said.
If there is one thing on which intelligence agencies on both sides of the border agree, it is that the consequences of a new attack by Lashkar could be devastating.
“We do fear that if something like Mumbai happens in India again, there might be a military reaction from the Indian side and it could trigger into a war,” said a senior intelligence official in Pakistan.
“Right now we cannot guarantee that it will not happen again, because we do not have any control over it.”

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Interpol had issued an international arrest warrant for Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba. In fact, Interpol issued a ‘Red Notice,’ which informs authorities worldwide that a national judicial authority has issued an arrest warrant for the person in question.

Monday, September 28, 2009

The steady rise of Islamic finance - BBC - By Emily Buchanan and Bhasker Solanki




 
Page last updated at 12:01 GMT, Wednesday, 23 September 2009 13:01 UK

The steady rise of Islamic finance


By Emily Buchanan and Bhasker Solanki 
BBC News

 
Leading scholar Sheikh Hussain Hassan. Picture: Bhasker Solanki
The banking crisis was avoidable, says Islamic scholar Sheikh Hussain Hussan
London has become one of the biggest centres for Islamic finance in the world, with five Islamic banks, and many others in the high street offering Islamic financial products, or "windows" as they are known.
The growth of Islamic finance has been an unexpected outcome of the attacks on the World Trade Center of 11 September 2001.
Islamic finance is based on rules from Islam's holy texts - the Koran. Scholars claim the fundamental difference to conventional banking is that Islamic finance is more ethical.
First it bans any form of "riba" or interest, preventing consumers being exploited by high rates of borrowing.
'Sinful'
Secondly, it regards speculative trading as sinful. One of the world's leading experts on Islamic finance, Sheikh Hussain Hassan, argues the whole crisis in Western banking could have been avoided if these basic sharia principles had been followed.
He said: "$600 trillion were wasted on options, futures and derivatives, all gambling. Sharia prohibited these kind of risks 14 centuries back."
 We have a policy of no obstacles, no special favours, towards Islamic banking or indeed any new financial company 
Financial Services Authority
Some Muslims regard ordinary mortgages as sinful. The idea is for the lender and the borrower to share the risk. There are now more products on the market which help Muslims buy a house without paying interest.
The most common form of Islamic home purchase loan works like this: When a couple wants to buy a house, instead of borrowing the money, the Islamic bank buys 80% of the house for them.
The couple puts down a deposit for the other 20% and then pays the bank rent, plus regular portions of the capital. During the fixed period, ownership gradually passes from the bank to the buyer.
But if the borrower loses his job and defaults on the payments, under sharia law it is very difficult for the family to be thrown out of their home, as that would be seen as a creditor exploiting a debtor.
These interest-avoiding transactions can work on a bigger scale as well.
Farmida Bi explains why London is now attracting Muslim investment
The old Chelsea Barracks in London was bought by the Qatari government for nearly £1bn - the biggest residential property deal in the UK.
The entire transaction was done under sharia pinciples, with contracts drawn up by lawyers at Norton Rose.
Farmida Bi, one of the law firm's partners, explained that London has attracted this kind of investment because the British government wooed Islamic money in the wake of 9/11, at the expense of the US.
"It was really September 11th that made being a Muslim a political statement and not just a matter of personal faith," she said.
"And with the Patriot Act, which made investments in the US difficult for many Islamic investors, there was a significant increase in Islamic investors choosing to invest in Islamic institutions and Islamic products."
So while groups in the US were investigating terrorist connections with Islamic banks, Muslim investors pulled their money out of America.
Some of the money got diverted to London, which had traditionally been a banking centre. The British government then helped further by changing regulations to give sharia-compliant funds a level playing field with conventional ones.
Staff at Salaam Insurance. Picture: Bhasker Solanki
Salaam Insurance offers Europe's first sharia-compliant car insurance
A spokesperson for the Financial Services Authority, the body which regulates UK financial services, said: "We have a policy of no obstacles and no special favours towards Islamic banking, or indeed any new financial company."
The desire of British Muslim consumers to affirm their identity is also leading to a growth in new consumer services.
Salaam Insurance has launched Europe's first sharia-compliant car insurance aimed at Britain's 700,000 Muslim drivers.
Bradley Brandon-Cross, its non-Muslim chief executive, finds most Muslims do not yet understand the profit and loss sharing principles of "takaful" that it is based on.
"There's clearly an education campaign we are undertaking for British Muslims, to help them understand what Islamic finance is and what it means for them," he said.
Critics say the Islamic character of the products is merely window dressing to lure in Muslim customers.
And others argue the scholars who authorise them are a narrow group whom financial institutions choose to support their new services.
But this scepticism is unlikely to halt the inexorable growth of Islamic finance - as big investors and growing numbers of Muslim consumers demand it.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Obama should sack McChrystal like Truman sacked Macarthur - By Ghulam Muhammed




Sunday, September 27, 2009


Obama should sack McChrystal like Truman sacked Macarthur


Obama seems to have been bogged down in a big quagmire. Too much to do, to little time and attention span to do justice to some very very important issues that will shape the coming world. Perforce, he has to depend on his advisors. That gives ample opportunity to his advisors to use his need to their own pet schemes, lobbied by different groups, not necessarily in tune with Obama’s own world-view.

Obama had held that US should have gone into Afghanistan to fight terrorism supposedly spearheaded by Al-Qaeda, instead of Iraq. But Bush was under the thumb ofAmerica’s Israeli lobby, the Jewish Neo-con cabal. They whipped us big hysteria against Saddam, who was a big hollow drumbeater with his bogus nuclear threat. The world knew about it, US knew about it and even Israel knew about it. But for Israel Saddam’s empty boasts was enough to force Bush to go after him and get an oil rich nation as the war booty. Millions died and misplaced in America’s illegal invasion of a UN member nation, in carpet bombing of a defenseless desert country.

Now that Obama has focused his attention on Afghanistan, and blindly signs all army requests for increased troops to spread out in villages of Afghanistan and commit atrocities on poor village folks, as US troops had unleashed their criminal lust for innocent blood in Iraq, Al Qaeda has quietly left the field and move to other areas of operation in Yemen, Somalia and possibly some western countries as well.
US and NATO casualties are at all time high. And there is enormous pressure building up back in the West, especially UK and Germany to a great extent and in US itself to a lesser degree, against continuing an unending war in Afghanistan.

Obama now in the midst of deeply divisive issues like control on banking and Public Health, America’s army Chief has chosen to go in his own way. Like General Macarthur, he thinks he is bigger than the President. The scenario is exactly like the one seen by the world in Japan war. Macarthur had his own plans on carrying on his personal ego trip to expand the war and later claim nation’s endorsement for a Presidential top spot. Harry Truman was shrewd enough to get the whole picture without getting overwhelmed by the larger than life image of General Macarthur and his victories in the Pacific sector. On a fine day, out goes a Presidential order and General Macarthur is relieved of his command.

That moment seems to have arrived with General McChrystal persisting in his relentless drive to pour more and more troops into Afghanistan, regardless of the damage it is inflicting on innocent people of a foreign country made victim of propaganda by motivated media groups.

This is moment, Obama should sack McChrystal and give a much needed signal to the countries in the region, that US under Obama is not for winning friends and influencing people through drone bombings.

The US and its allies are always welcome to help Afghanistan people, through people who can genuinely give Afghanistan an effective and peaceful government and not be tainted by the artificial electoral games on the behind the scene management of foreign powers. As Obama himself admitted in his UN General Assembly speech; democracy cannot be forced on the people who have their own age-old idea of how consensus works in their societies. If it’s a Jirga that works, Jirga they should have. If it is the Taliban that works for them, Taliban they should have.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Friday, September 25, 2009

HOW OBAMA WAS GANGED UP TO ISSUE NEW WARNING TO IRAN

HOW OBAMA WAS GANGED UP TO ISSUE NEW WARNING TO IRAN

A RARE INSIGHT INTO HOW A HANDFUL OF CONSPIRATORS CAN FORCE THE WORLD TO THE BRINK OF WAR WHERE MILLIONS OF INNOCENTS DIE



Cryptic Iranian Note Ignited an Urgent Nuclear Strategy Debate

Published: September 25, 2009

PITTSBURGH — On Tuesday evening in New York, top officials of the world nuclear watchdog agency approached two of President Obama’s senior advisers to deliver the news: Iran had just sent a cryptic letter describing a small “pilot” nuclear facility that the country had never before declared.

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The Americans were surprised by the letter, but they were angry about what it did not say. American intelligence had come across the hidden tunnel complex years earlier, and the advisers believed the situation was far more ominous than the Iranians were letting on.


That night, huddled in a hotel room in the Waldorf-Astoria until well into the early hours, five of Mr. Obama’s closest national security advisers, in New York for the administration’s first United Nations General Assembly, went back and forth on what they would advise their boss when they took him the news in the morning. A few hours later, in a different hotel room, they met with Mr. Obama and his senior national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, to talk strategy.


The White House essentially decided to outflank the Iranians, to present to their allies and the public what they believed was powerful evidence that there was more to the Iranian site than just some pilot program. They saw it as a chance to use this evidence to persuade other countries to support the case for stronger sanctions by showing that the Iranians were still working on a secret nuclear plan.


It was three dramatic days of highly sensitive diplomacy and political maneuvering, from an ornate room at the Waldorf, where Mr. Obama pressed President Dimitri A. Medvedev of Russia for support, to the United Nations Security Council chamber, where General Jones at one point hustled his Russian counterpart from the room in the middle of a rare meeting of Council leaders.


General Jones told his counterpart, Sergei Prikhodko, that the United States was going to go public with the intelligence. Meanwhile, in the hallways of the United Nations and over the phone, American and European officials debated when, and how, to present their case against Iran to the world.


European officials urged speed, saying that Mr. Obama should accuse Iran of developing the secret facility first thing Thursday morning, when he presided over the Security Council for the very first time. It would have been a stirring and confrontational moment. But White House officials countered that it was too soon; they would not have time to brief allies and the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Mr. Obama did not want to dilute the nuclear nonproliferation resolution he was pushing through the Security Council by diverting to Iran.


In the end, Mr. Obama stood on the floor of the Pittsburgh Convention Center on Friday morning, flanked by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, and called the Iranian facility “a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.”


Added Mr. Brown, “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”


This account of the days leading up to the announcement on Friday is based on interviews with administration officials and American allies, all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iran.


The Iranians have continued to assert that their nuclear program has peaceful intentions. And while American officials say the secretive nature of the program lends support to the view that it is truly an expanding weapons program, even United States intelligence officials acknowledge that there is no evidence that Iran has taken the final steps toward creating a bomb.


There was “a fair amount at anger” within the administration over Iran’s disclosure, a senior administration official said. But there was also some satisfaction. A second senior official said: “Everybody’s been asking, ‘Where’s our leverage?’ Well, now we just got that leverage.”


Administration officials said that Mr. Obama had two goals in going public: to directly confront Iran with the evidence, and to persuade wavering nations to take a hard line on Iran.


In fact, the makings of the administration’s strategy was hatched months before, when the White House first came to believe that the complex, built into a mountain on property near Qum controlled by Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, might be a part of the nuclear program. Over time, the file that intelligence officials accumulated on the facility developed as a cudgel, a way to win over wary allies and test if the Iranians were being truthful in their disclosures.


Senior intelligence officials said Friday that several years ago American intelligence agencies under the administration of George W. Bush discovered the suspicious site. The site was one of Iran’s most closely guarded secrets, the officials said, known only by senior members of Iran’s nuclear establishment. The officials said that housing the complex on the base gave it an extra layer of security.


Mr. Obama was first told about the existence of the covert site during his transition period in late 2008, White House officials said, after he had been elected but before he was inaugurated. But it was not until earlier this year that American spy agencies detected the movement of sensitive equipment into the facility — a sign, they believed, that whatever work was involved was nearing its final stages.


American officials said Friday that the facility could have been fully operational by next year, with up to 3,000 centrifuges capable of producing one weapon’s worth of highly enriched nuclear material per year.


“Over the course of early this year, the intelligence community and our liaison partners became increasingly confident that the site was indeed a uranium enrichment facility,” a senior administration official said. He said that Mr. Obama received regular intelligence updates on the progress of the site.


The officials said that they developed a detailed picture about work on the facility from multiple human intelligence sources, as well as satellite imagery. A senior official said that intelligence was regularly shared among American, British and French spy agencies, and that Israeli officials were told about the complex years ago. They were not more specific about when they first learned about it.


At some point in late spring, American officials became aware that Iranian operatives had learned that the site was being monitored, the officials said.


As the administration reviewed its Iran policy in April, Mr. Obama told aides at one point that if the United States entered into talks with Iran, he wanted to make sure “all the facts were on the table early, including information on this site — so that negotiations would be meaningful and transparent,” a senior administration official said.


As the summer progressed, British, French and American officials grew more worried about what Iran might do now that it was aware that security at the complex had been breached.


In late July, after the mass protests over Iran’s disputed election had died down, Mr. Obama told his national security team to have American intelligence officials work with their British and French counterparts to secretly put together a detailed presentation on the complex.


“That brief would be deployed in the case of a number of contingencies,” the administration official said. “If Iran refused to negotiate, in the case of a leak of the information, and even an Iranian disclosure.” Mr. Obama asked his aides to have the presentation ready by the General Assembly meeting.


“We could not have negotiations of any meaning if we were only going to talk about overt sites and not covert sites,” a senior administration official said.


As late as last weekend, American officials were still uncertain about when to publicly present the intelligence about the secret enrichment facility. The game plan changed Tuesday, when officials from the nuclear watchdog agency informed the Americans that Iran had sent the letter describing the “pilot” facility.


At his meeting at the Waldorf the next morning, Mr. Obama decided that he would personally tell Mr. Medvedev, the Russian president, when they met Wednesday afternoon for a previously scheduled meeting. Mr. Obama also spoke with Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Brown. Meanwhile, Jeff Bader, a senior White House adviser for China, informed his Chinese counterparts.


On Thursday, while Mr. Obama was leading the Security Council meeting, General Jones left his seat behind Mr. Obama, walked over to Mr. Prikhodko, the Russian national security adviser, and whispered in his ear. Mr. Prikhodko got up and followed General Jones out of the room. Minutes later, General Jones sent an aide back to get his Chinese counterpart as well.


Administration officials said they were gratified with Russia’s reaction — Mr. Medvedev signaled he would be amenable to tougher sanctions on Iran. The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical, and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.
The lessons of the Iraq war still lingered.


“They don’t want to buy a pig in a poke,” the senior administration official said.



Helene Cooper reported from Pittsburgh, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.