There are times I have to remind myself I’m reading a news report and not some Publisher’s Weekly description of an international thriller, burning up the bestseller lists and slated for the big screen. Such was the situation recently when New York Times’ journalists William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported on the case being built by US intelligence and its diplomatic envoys, attempting to convince the world Iran is covertly building a nuclear capability, complete with missile delivery system.

The US purports to be in possession of a stolen laptop from Iran, whose original owner is understood to be dead. American intelligence analysts claim it shows several years of consistent effort to develop the detonator portion of a warhead, featuring a design – they argue – only makes sense if the payload is nuclear.

Then there are multiple secret briefings, the most recent atop a Vienna skyscraper adjacent to the placid Danube, a rogue Pakistani engineer who runs a black market in all things nuclear, and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headed by a director sufficiently unpopular with the Americans, they’ve previously tried to get him replaced.

This last move seems really over the top considering that the UN official in question has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and continues to point out that due process requires the Americans to confront the Iranians directly with this evidence. But the Americans are choosing to show seemingly everyone but the Iranians, while facing down a self-created problem concerning their own credibility. Escalating the pressure, there’s a vote coming up fast in the UN Security Council, and so far Russia and China are mum about where they stand.

No, this is not fiction; it only feels that way.

Now my concern is not political. My concern is about the nature of evidence in today’s technological society and the difficulties of dealing with expert advice in science and engineering, with the resulting challenge of making a wise decision.

First of all, the information on the laptop covers three-plus years of technical effort, thought to be the work of an entire team of engineers. And … it’s all in Persian. Frankly, the internal system dates and times of when documents were created and modified are language-independent, which makes the timelines comprehensible to anyone, but the documents themselves must all be translated.

And that’s only if you believe the laptop isn’t some elaborate ruse created by who-knows-who for who-knows-what purposes. Creating an information base with such complexity and consistency is difficult to fathom … but possible. It would require commitment and resources, and why not? The stakes are high, the hard disks of laptops are there for the writing, and power plays have more currency than truth.

The other problem here is that it requires a leap of deduction to put the whole conspiracy together. The documents themselves, even after being translated, require further interpretation from experts, not only to explain what you’re looking at, but also to show how this effort fits into a larger (and presumptive) plan, one which would eventually play out in a fully-operational nuclear capability, perhaps 5 to 10 years down the line.

Which leads me to ask you … have you ever been forced to listen to a cadre of experts, egotistically jousting on matters of complicated science and technology? Pray that you never do.

It remains to be seen if the decision-makers here will make a wise decision, or an advantageous one, or perhaps one in the interests of expediency.

It’s a real page-turner, I tell you, any way you look at it.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.