In September, President Obama and the international community revealed the existence of a secret proposed uranium enrichment site at Qom, Iran, and criticized the Islamic Republic for failing to notify the IAEA or allow inspectors. Weeks later, Iran did let in the inspectors, and today the IAEA announced there was nothing objectionable at the site:

U.N. inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday [...]

(Mohammed) ElBaradei was quoted in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors’ initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi’ite holy city of Qom were “nothing to be worried about.”

“The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things,” ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran’s references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by a foe like Israel.

“It’s a hole in a mountain,” he said.

One wonders if this will get any notice at all in the American press. Neocons and the media seized upon the initial announcement as proof of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, despite the fact that the United States knew about the Qom facility for years, and that it was not developed or ready to enrich uranium. Now we learn that it was a hole in a mountain and nothing more. So will anyone bother to mention that?

Meanwhile, ElBaradei said that he was pushing a compromise deal that would allow Iran to provide nuclear fuel to a third party for enrichment and then shipped back to Iran for civilian energy use. Hillary Clinton had previously said that there would be no climb-down from the initial proposal from the West.