Abu Wabu

Interesting how the Intelligence Community that, to hear most any idiot describe it, screwed up so badly on Saddam's WMDs that they can't be believed ever again for the rest of time, is now faultlessly sage in its most recent "estimation" of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Another case of idiots moving the goalposts when it suits.

Happily, President Bush gave the response I expected he would give when asked his opinion of the NIE: he still considers Iran's nukes a threat and nothing has changed in his approach to the problem. Bush does well to wave off this latest NIE because it's far more a policy paper authored by adversaries in the IC than it is anything approaching a believable intelligence report. A close reading of it beyond what it has been predictably given by the usual Bush detractors proves that. First, Commentary Magazine's analysis, beginning with Max Boot:

In short, while Iran’s nuclear-weapons program may have been suspended (the NIE expresses only “moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007”), the “civilian” nuclear program is going forward. What the NIE doesn’t spell out is that it’s fairly easy to convert a civilian nuclear program into a military nuclear weapons program. All you need is the appropriate “scientific, technical, and industrial capacity”—which the NIE says “with high confidence that Iran has”—and some highly-enriched fissile material, which Iran is trying to produce.

That doesn't inspire confidence. Norman Podhoretz:

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

Now who the fuck cares about Iran's "security, prestige, and goals for regional influence" anyway? Not me, certainly not when they've been screaming at me for years that their "goals for regional influence" include "destroying the Great Satan" and "wiping Israel off the map".

But I digress.

On to Power Line's Paul Mirengoff, who adds to a comprehensive review there of the NIE and its implications:

I assess with moderate to high confidence that the CIA is a joke. Take the claim that Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003 in response to international pressure. How does the CIA know that this is what caused Iran to take this action (assuming it actually did halt the program)? Isn't it far more likely that Iran would have been motivated by fear of U.S. military action? After all, we had just taken out the regimes in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. I assess with moderate confidence that the CIA (and the intelligence community as a whole) is engaging in politically-motivated speculation, not legitimate intelligence, here.

I further assess with high confidence that we should ignore the NIE assessment of Iran's nuclear program (has the CIA ever been correct about the status of a secretive foreign power's weapons program?) and defer to Israeli intelligence.

Same here. The CIA and State have been working overtime to undermine the Bush White House since day one, whereas the Israelis, who have Absolute Moral Authority in this matter, (I love that if I do say so myself) what with being targeted for destruction by Islamofascist Iranian madmen and all, have not.

Here's Opinion Journal on the troubling history of anti-Bush partisanship of the report's main authors:

Our own "confidence" is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation official John Bolton recalls in his recent memoir that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "described Brill's efforts in Vienna, or lack thereof, as 'bull--.'" Mr. Brill was "retired" from the State Department by Colin Powell before being rehired, over considerable internal and public protest, as head of the National Counter-Proliferation Center by then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

No less odd is the NIE's conclusion that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to "international pressure." The only serious pressure we can recall from that year was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the time, an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear program to mill and enrich uranium and produce heavy water at sites previously unknown to U.S. intelligence. The Bush Administration's response was to punt the issue to the Europeans, who in 2003 were just beginning years of fruitless diplomacy before the matter was turned over to the U.N. Security Council.
...

The larger worry here is how little we seem to have learned from our previous intelligence failures. Over the course of a decade, our intelligence services badly underestimated Saddam's nuclear ambitions, then overestimated them. Now they have done a 180-degree turn on Iran, and in such a way that will contribute to a complacency that will make it easier for Iran to build a weapon. Our intelligence services are supposed to inform the policies of elected officials, but increasingly their judgments seem to be setting policy. This is dangerous.

Thomas Joscelyn has five questions in the Weekly Standard. First, his preamble:

In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press’s intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…" But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye--no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn't getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.

Now Joscelyn's questions:

First, what intelligence is this assessment based upon?
Second, what has changed since 2005?
Third, how did the IC draw its line between a "civilian" nuclear program and a "military" one?
Fourth, how does the IC know that Iran has stopped its clandestine activities with respect to developing nuclear weapons?
Fifth, how does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior?

I have to agree with Michael Ledeen's description of the NIE as "policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.'' The NIE is not serious as an analytical document because it is rather a political propaganda play designed to handcuff Bush in dealing with Iran's nuclear aspirations. To its authors and their acolytes, their dream of defeating Bush trumps all other concerns, even that of protecting their own fellow citizens.

The most interesting part of the “Estimate” is of course its political and policy implications, which National Security Adviser Steven Hadley was quick to spell out. In his view, and in that of many political leaders and pundits, if Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, there is no great urgency to move against the mullahs.

And indeed, those “intelligence professionals” were very happy to take off their analytical caps and gowns and put on their policy wigs: “Although the officials as a rule, respecting the norms of their craft, declined to offer policy prescriptions based on their findings, the most senior official present did cite the finding that the Iranians are susceptible to international pressure and say that such pressure should “continue” as a way to “allow IAEA to have significant visibility into the program.”

This sort of blatant unprofessionalism is as common in today’s Washington as it is unworthy of a serious intel type, and I think it tells us a lot about the document itself. The “Key Findings” published yesterday address the obvious question: why would the Iranians abandon a program that had been in the works ever since the late 1980s?

The IC replies: because the Iranians are rational, and they respond to international pressure. They shut down the program because the pressure was too great. They couldn’t take the risk of even more pain from the international community.

At this point, one really has to wonder why anyone takes these documents seriously. How can anyone in his right mind believe that the mullahs are rational? Has no one told the IC about the cult of the 12th Imam, on which this regime bases its domestic and foreign policies? Does not the constant chant of “Death to America” mean anything? I suppose not, at least not to the deep thinkers who wrote this policy document.

And as for Iran’s delicate sensitivity to international pressure, just a few days ago, the European ‘foreign minister’ Javier Solana was on the verge of tears when he admitted he had been totally unable to get the Iranians to come clean on their uranium enrichment program, even though he had told them that more sanctions were in the works. Yet, according to the IC, this program–neatly described in a footnote to the “Estimate” as “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment—really doesn’t have anything to do with nuclear weapons. But if that is so, why are the Iranians so doggedly hiding it from UN inspectors?

This document will not stand up to serious criticism, but it will undoubtedly have a significant political impact, since it will be taken as confirmation of the view that we should not do anything mean to the mullahs. We should talk to them instead. And that’s just what the Estimate says:

…some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might–if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible–prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

Incredibly, the authors of the document claim they can prove all this: “The impact of international pressure is beyond dispute, the officials said, a “cause-and-effect” relationship backed up by an ‘evidentiary trail.’ “

But any good student who has taken Psych 101 will tell you that it’s nigh unto impossible to determine someone else’s intentions, especially when presented by “analysts” who think that Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rafsanjani are as rational as the rest of us. This is demeaning to the Iranian tyrants–for whom their faith is a matter of ultimate significance–and insulting to our leaders, who should expect serious work from the IC instead of this bit of policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.

There is at least one other interested party who has examined the NIE and found it wanting in credibility: Israel.

"The bottom line is that words don't stop missiles, actions do," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday evening in response to the US report.

"And there is much that needs to be done regarding the Iranian nuclear program. We need to take action in applying sanctions, in exercising diplomacy and in other venues as well."

Israeli intelligence disputes the report's conclusion, Barak said, and still believes Tehran is still trying to develop a nuclear weapon: ''It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program. There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right."

Asked if the new US assessment reduced chances that the US will launch a military strike on Iran, Barak said that was ''possible.''

However, he said, ''We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.''

After all, with friends like the authors of the NIE, who needs enemies?