Intelligence Estimate Puts Enormous Faith in Iran
The lack of wmds found in Iraq since 2003 utterly ravaged the reputation of the U.S. intelligence community. Intelligence officials say they’ve learned their lesson.
On Monday, they released a new report that is absolutely guaranteed to instantaneously restore the unqualified confidence and enthusiastic support of the American press. We can expect that nearly every critic of the intelligence that guided America’s decision to invade Iraq will accept this report as sacred scripture.
In its latest National Intelligence Estimate (nie), the National Intelligence Council says it now has “high confidence” that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago.
If the intelligence community overstated Iraq’s wmd capabilities in 2003, this report—in its effect—goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Not only does it single-handedly eliminate any rationale for military action against Iran, it all but deflates the prospect even of more sanctions. In nine terse pages, it deals a deadly, perhaps fatal blow to the U.S.-led international effort to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. No criticism of the text will be able to reverse that effect.
The intelligence community says it now sees Iran as a “rational actor”—meaning that the Islamic Republic bases its policies not on religious ideology, but on predictable “cost-benefit” calculations. This report says Iran’s abandonment of nuclear weapons development in 2003—done “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work”—suggests that “Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.”
Is it true? Some extraordinary intelligence must have suddenly become available to be able in one swoop to negate the profusion of proof to the contrary.
Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “rational actor”? Well, Iran’s president is known to make unorthodox statements from time to time—like when he said he believes the Twelfth Imam put him in office in order to provoke a clash of civilizations—or the time he said Israel would be wiped off the map in “one storm”—or when he said he looks forward to “a world without America.” What about the ruling mullahs Ahmadinejad reports to—the ones who have turned their nation into the world’s biggest bankroller of state-sponsored terrorism? “Rational actors”? Just the right combination of economic and political incentives and punishments, and they’ll give up their ambition to transform the Middle East into a Khomeinist empire?
This nie places an extraordinary degree of trust in individuals who have provided precious little evidence they can be trusted.
In stating that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program, the nie explicitly excludes “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” Yes, it simply takes Ahmadinejad at his word that the hundreds of millions of dollars oil-rich Iran has poured into its nuclear program have been exclusively for domestic energy production.
But the nie’s conclusions go beyond simply accepting Iran’s denials of having any ulterior motives for its nuclear project. They implicitly assume that years of damning evidence and deceitful behavior on Iran’s part were essentially a big bluff. And hey, nobody got hurt—so let’s all forget it and move on.
Consider it: For a nation without a nuclear weapons program for four years, Iran has done an impressive impersonation of a nation trying to hide a nuclear weapons program. (Not exactly the kind of performance you’d expect from a “rational actor.”) It has restricted the iaea access to its nuclear facilities. It has threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the face of all opposition and despite having plenty of oil energy, it has adamantly, even belligerently defended its right to enrich uranium. It has shrouded its supposedly peaceful nuclear program in alarming secrecy. It has been defiant in the face of having sanctions leveled against it for its obstinance and duplicity.
Only last week, the iaea director said Iran now has 3,000 centrifuges busily enriching uranium, but he couldn’t say whether they could be used to make nuclear weapons—because of restrictions Tehran had placed on his inspectors. Just two days before the nie was released, Iran’s new nuclear negotiator brusquely informed officials in London representing the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany that all prior discussions regarding its uranium-enrichment program were null and void.
If the nie is to be believed, all this stonewalling and chest-thumping was essentially a harmless effort to con the world into worrying itself over the possibility of an Iranian nuke.
Is the nie to be believed? When the cia released a report in November 2004 saying it was “convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program,” a skeptical press dismissed it, accusing the Bush administration of trumping up excuses to attack Iran. But now, when the assessment kicks the possibility of an Iranian threat down the road three to eight years or more—which in today’s political climate effectively means forever—the skepticism over the quality of America’s intelligence has melted away.
Oh that it were true. But the fact is, honest reporting will acknowledge that this estimate could be seriously flawed. Even the intelligence officials, when releasing it, admitted to gaps in their capabilities and called Iran’s nuclear program “probably the hardest intelligence target there is” (which in itself is only true because of Iran’s chronic deceitfulness).
Notice this statement from the report: “We assess with moderate confidence that Iran probably would use covert facilities—rather than its declared nuclear sites—for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon.” Based on every successful nuclear program in history, and given Iran’s history of deceit, I would assess with absolute confidence that Iran would absolutely use covert facilities to make nuclear weapons. Nobody advertises serious efforts to manufacture nukes—that is, until they detonate them.
For its part, Israel has contended for at least three years that the nuclear program Iran has been tussling with the iaea over is actually a distraction from a more secret program. The nie itself confirms that Iran had a covert nuclear weapons program for about a decade and a half leading up to 2003, when it supposedly came to an abrupt halt. Iran simply has a long history of nuclear trickery. Yet now, suddenly, the intelligence community can “judge with high confidence” that it all ended in 2003?
Actually, that “high confidence” isn’t quite as bullet-proof as mainstream headlines might suggest. Notice this statement—buried within parentheses in the estimate: “(Because of intelligence gaps … [we] assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)” In other words, Yes, they had a covert nuclear weapons program before 2003, but those days are over. Unless they’re not over.
The report is a maze of such carefully hedged statements, conjectures and guesses. We do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons. We assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame. The New York Sun quoted one former senior intelligence officer as saying that this is like submitting a report saying the sun will come up tomorrow unless it doesn’t.
The bottom line is, Iranian officials can relax. The reality made plain in this report is that America doesn’t know what in the world is going on with Iran’s nuclear program.
Nevertheless—despite all this uncertainty—that’s not how it translates to the public. For all practical purposes, whatever urgency there may have been to confront the threat from Iran has dissipated. If the military option was ever on the table, it’s off now. U.S. policy will proceed forward as if Iranian nuclear weapons pose virtually no threat whatsoever. Iran is already demanding an apology and reparations from the U.S. for all the trouble it caused by flinging out pesky accusations about nuclear weapons.
So—think of it: Official U.S. doctrine is that Iran is not a nuclear threat. We may well see some kind of reconciliation between the two nations. With the U.S. over a barrel in Iraq and looking for ways to reduce its presence there—before next November’s presidential election if possible—we may see Washington work out a deal that subcontracts the situation to Iran. We can certainly expect the U.S. to become far more comfortable with Iran’s influence in Iraq, a scenario the Trumpet has forecasted for over a decade. The faith the U.S. is placing in Iran in this latest nie is sure to grow.
In the end, the U.S. shrinking away from its role as a check on Iran is going to cement Iran’s establishment as the premier power in the Middle East.
And we shouldn’t be too surprised if, sometime soon, Iran forces another reputation-crushing reassessment by the intelligence community when it suddenly tests its first nuclear weapon.