Adjunct Scholar at Middle East Institute, and former diplomat, writes about the latest twists concerning AMerican intelligence on Iran's nuclear program
President's about-face on Iran
By WAYNE WHITE
(Note: The following article was published in the Pocono Record, Pennsylvania, and can also be accessed at http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071206/NEWS04/712060323. It’s reprinted here with permission.)
The reversal of the Intelligence Community's judgment that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program reduces the likelihood of U.S. military action against Iran and makes new sanctions against Iran less likely. It also will further undermine U.S. credibility abroad — both U.S. intelligence and that of the Bush administration.
The unclassified key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran released this week remove some of the rationale behind a major aspect of the administration's Iran policy: That the international community must take urgent action to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. In fact, of the various judgments in this new NIE, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with the most confidence that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that halt lasted "at least several years." This reversed the conclusions of an earlier NIE stating that Iran still had an active nuclear program.
When the judgments of this long-awaited NIE were released, the United States was in the midst of an aggressive lobbying effort to impose a third set of U.N. sanctions against Iran because of Iran's failure to reveal more about its nuclear program and to stop enriching uranium. The president argued yesterday that Iran's increasing success in uranium enrichment — which ultimately could lead to the development of nuclear weapons — still justified the same approach.
Nonetheless, the principal rationale behind international support for sanctions against Iran was the fear that Iran was working on a nuclear weapon. Those concerns have not gone away entirely: The NIE confirms that the Iranian military did have such a program until late 2003, and is less confident that this program has not been reactivated recently. However, the NIE not only downplays Iran's determination to develop nuclear weapons, it also indicates that it probably would take Iran longer to fashion a nuclear weapon even if it tries.
It has become increasingly clear that sanctions aimed at Iran so far have only angered the Iranians. In nuclear talks just last week, Iran was more defiant than ever before. And Iran probably can continue to remain defiant at a time when its oil exports are fetching around $90 per barrel. Key U.N. Security Council members Russia and China, already unenthusiastic about sanctions, will be even less inclined to vote for them now and less convinced that sanctions have much chance of success.
Moreover, U.S. intelligence has taken another big hit. This comes as a severe blow in the wake of the infamous 2002 NIE that said Iraq had WMD (including a nuclear weapons program). And, if that weren't enough, this NIE contradicts a 2005 NIE that concluded that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program. In fact, this intelligence track record is so bad that many observers are wondering whether even this NIE can be relied upon.
And then there is the issue of the president's credibility. He said yesterday that he did not know about these new findings until last week. But this NIE has been in production since early this year, and U.S. intelligence officials received the intelligence casting doubt on previous conclusions early last summer. Consequently, the president's claim that he has only known about this new shift since last week may not be regarded as believable by other governments he has badgered recently to press ahead with more sanctions.
In 26 years with the Intelligence Community, I worked on scores of NIEs, and progress reports concerning the most important ones were given to the head of national intelligence on at least a weekly basis. Consequently, it is difficult to explain how the president could have remained so far out of the loop — and for so long — on a subject of such intense interest.
Perhaps the most important impact of this new NIE will be to reduce significantly the likelihood of U.S. military action against Iran to take out much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Nonetheless, Israel does not appear to agree with the new NIE's findings. So the odds regarding possible Israeli military action against Iran at some point probably have not changed at all.
(Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at Washington, D.C.'s Middle East Institute, is a retired Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department's Near East and South Asia Intelligence office. He has lived and worked in Niger, Haiti, Egypt, Israel and Iraq. In 2000, he received the National Intelligence Medal for Outstanding Achievement and in 2005 the Secretary's Career Achievement Award from Secretary of State Powell. He and his wife, Sonia Melnikoff White, live in Canadensis.)