Now under international pressure to explain the events, the Iranians shifted from silence to deception. Yes, they said, there had indeed been a string of unfortunate accidents at a number of civilian and military installations. Precisely how many facilities had been damaged the regime refused to say, only that all were nonnuclear in nature. “But this should come as a surprise to no one,” the Iranian president said in an interview with a friendly journalist from China. “The Islamic Republic has no desire to produce nuclear weapons. Our program is entirely peaceful.”

But still the leaks kept coming. And still the questions continued to be asked. If the four facilities involved were truly nonnuclear, why were they concealed in tunnels? And if they were for entirely peaceful purposes, why did the regime attempt to keep the explosions a secret? Since the mullahs refused to answer, the International Atomic Energy Agency did so for them. In a dramatic special report, the IAEA stated conclusively that each of the four facilities housed a cascade of centrifuges. There was only one possible conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. The Iranians were enriching uranium in secret. And they were planning to go for nuclear breakout.

The report was an earthquake. Within hours there were calls at the United Nations for crippling sanctions while the president of France suggested it might be time for allied military action—with the Americans taking the lead, of course. Painted into a rhetorical corner by years of deception, the Iranian regime had no option but to lash out, claiming it had been forced into a program of widespread concealment by constant Western threats. Furthermore, said the regime, its own investigation of the explosions had revealed they were caused by sabotage. High on the list of suspects were the Great Satan and its Zionist ally. “Tampering with our plants was an act of war,” said the Iranian president. “And the Islamic Republic will respond in the very near future in a manner of our choosing.”

The level of bombast rose quickly, as did the specificity of Iranian accusations of American and Israeli involvement. Sensing an opportunity to strengthen its position internally, the regime called on the Iranian people to protest this wanton violation of sovereignty. What they got instead was the largest rally in the history of the Iranian opposition movement. The mullahs responded by unleashing the dreaded Basij paramilitary forces. By the end of the day, more than a hundred protesters were dead and thousands more were in custody.