Today’s New York Times reports: “The United States and three European allies have given Russia and China a draft text for a Security Council resolution against Iran’s nuclear program. The proposal includes the extraordinary step of preventing Iranian students from studying nuclear physics at foreign universities and colleges.” The Times continues:

In fact, recent history suggests the U.S. and our allies have good reason to be concerned about such contributions to Iran’s weapons programs. Saddam, as I have noted before, tapped foreign universities to boost his nuclear program – a program that “was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb,” the Washington Post reported in August 1991, “not five to 10 years as previously thought.” In a 1995 Washington Quarterly article, “Denial and Deception Practices WMD Proliferators: Iraq and Beyond,” former weapons inspector David Kay wrote that Iraq hid its nuclear weapons program by keeping it “heavily compartmentalized” and employing a variety of deception techniques. For example, Iraq created a network of front companies to import nuclear-related materials “in quantities that were below the size that triggered controls.” Kay continued: