U.S. report: Iran halted nuclear weapons drive in 2003

Estimate of Iran changes, U.S. policy doesn't
Estimate of Iran changes, U.S. policy doesn't
By Richard Wolf and Richard Willing, USA TODAY
Contributing: Charles Levinson
12/4/07

WASHINGTON ?- A new intelligence estimate that reverses previous U.S. claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons will not change the Bush administration's policy of tough sanctions and diplomacy.

"That was our policy … and that's our policy going forward," said Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser. "We have the right strategy."

Iran ceased its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not resumed work toward building nuclear arms, a National Intelligence Estimate released Monday says. The estimate reverses claims the intelligence community made two years ago that Iran appeared "determined to develop" a nuclear weapons program.

The new estimate did not explain why the intelligence community did not know Iran had stopped its weapons program before the 2005 estimate was released.

The estimate, reflecting the collective judgment of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, also concludes that Tehran probably is "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons" by continuing to build missiles and pursue a civilian nuclear power program.

Iran, intelligence analysts concluded, halted weapons development in response to international scrutiny and the threat of increased sanctions.

U.S. officials are still trying to enlist more nations to bring sanctions against Iran. On Monday, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said he met with Chinese officials to agree on key issues involved in imposing a third set of United Nations sanctions on Iran for continuing a nuclear weapons program.

Shortly after Burns' comments in Singapore, the intelligence community released its estimate saying Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Despite the differences from the 2005 analysis, intelligence officials thought it was important to set the record straight by making public that "our understanding of Iran's capabilities have changed," said Donald Kerr, deputy director of national intelligence.

Monday's estimate was a double "good news story," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"The intelligence community was willing to reconsider an important intelligence judgment," Bond said. "Iran doesn't appear to be currently working on a bomb."

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the estimate undercuts the administration's "obsession with regime change and irresponsible talk of World War III." Last month, President Bush said the U.S. policy toward Iran was aimed at avoiding "World War III."

"The NIE makes clear that the right combination of pressure and positive incentives could prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program," said Biden, a Democratic candidate for president.

Mordechai Kedar, who served in Israel's military intelligence for 25 years and is a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israel's intelligence community disagrees with the latest estimate.

"This is a matter of interpretation of data. I do believe that the U.S. and Israel share the same data, but the dispute is about interpreting the data. … Only a blind man cannot see their efforts to put a hand on a nuclear weapon. They are threatening the world."

McClatchy Scribe Hit 'Hype' On Iran's Nukes a Month Ago
I've been saluting McClathcy (formerly Knight-Ridder) Jonathan Landay as one of the best journalists in the country for at least two years. They always get it right. ---BBB

McClatchy Scribe Hit 'Hype' On Iran's Nukes a Month Ago
By E&P Staff
Published: December 04, 2007

Five years ago, Jonathan Landay was one of several Knight Ridder reporters in Washington, D.C., who later earned much praise for being among the few who repeatedly questioned the validity of White House claims of Iraqi WMDs. Now, in the wake of yesterday's National Intelligence Estimate bombshell, debunking years of White House claims of an active Iranian nuclear weapons project, Landay (now under McClatchy's banner) can take a bow again.

Exactly one month ago, on Nov. 4, the McClatchy moved a lengthy Landay probe titled, "Experts: No firm evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons." An excerpt follows.

Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

"Iran is seeking a nuclear capability ... that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability," Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.

"I don't think that anyone right today thinks they're working on a bomb," said another U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. Outside experts say the operative words are "right today." They say Iran may have been actively seeking to create a nuclear-weapons capacity in the past and still could break out of its current uranium-enrichment program and start a weapons program. They too lack definitive proof, but cite a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Bush's rhetoric seems hyperbolic compared with the measured statements by his senior aides and outside experts.

"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said Oct. 17 at a news conference.

"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney warned on Oct 23. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

Bush and Cheney's allegations are under especially close scrutiny because their similar allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program proved to be wrong....

If conclusive proof exists, however, Bush hasn't revealed it. Nor have four years of IAEA inspections.

"I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear-weapons program going on right now," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei asserted in an interview Oct. 31 with CNN.

"There is no smoking-gun proof of work on a nuclear weapon, but there is enough evidence that points in that direction," said Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation controls.

New light may be shed when the IAEA reports this month on whether Iran is fulfilling an August accord to answer all outstanding questions about the nuclear-enrichment program it long concealed from the U.N. watchdog agency.

Its report is expected to focus on Iran's work with devices that spin uranium hexafluoride gas to produce low-enriched uranium for power plants or highly enriched uranium for weapons, depending on the duration of the process.

Iran asserts that it's working only with the P1, an older centrifuge that it admitted buying in 1987 from an international black-market network headed by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

But IAEA inspectors determined that Iran failed to reveal that it had obtained blueprints for the P2, a centrifuge twice as efficient as the P1, from the Khan network in 1995.

Iranian officials say they did nothing with the blueprints until 2002, when they were given to a private firm that produced and tested seven modified P2 parts, then abandoned the effort.

IAEA inspectors, however, discovered that Iran sought to buy thousands of specialized magnets for P2s from European suppliers, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last year that research on the centrifuges continued.

The IAEA has been stymied in trying to discover the project's scope, fueling suspicions that the Iranian military may be secretly running a P2 development program parallel to the civilian-run P1 program at Natanz.

and yet george won't put his dick back in his pants.....

Iran: Another Intelligence Failure On the Part of the Press?
Debunking Iran's Nuclear Program: Another 'Intelligence Failure' -- On the Part of the Press?
By Greg Mitchell
E & P
December 04, 2007

Iraqi WMD redux: The release of the NIE throwing cold water on oft-repeated claims of a rampant Iranian nuclear weapons program has chastened public officials and policymakers who have promoted this line for years. But many in the media have made these same claims, often extravagantly.

Press reports so far have suggested that the belated release of the National Intelligence Estimate yesterday throwing cold water on oft-repeated claims of a rampant Iranian nuclear weapons program has deeply embarrassed, or at least chastened, public officials and policymakers who have promoted this line for years. Gaining little attention so far: Many in the media have made these same claims, often extravagantly, which promoted (deliberately or not) the tubthumping for striking Iran.

Surely you remember Sen. John McCain's inspired Beach Boys' parody, a YouTube favorite, "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran"? That was the least of it. You could dance to it and it had a good beat. Not so for so much of the press and punditry surrounding the bomb. Who can forget Norman Podhoretz's call for an immediate attack on Iran, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last May, as he argued that "the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938."

As I've warned in this space for years, too many in the media seemed to fail to learn the lessons of the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure -- and White House propaganda effort -- and instead, were repeating it, re: Iran. This time, perhaps, we may have averted war, with little help from most of the media. In this case, it appears, the NIE people managed to resist several months of efforts by the administration to change their assessment. If only they had stiffened their backbones concerning Iraq in 2002.

For the rest of today and this week, media critics will be offering up all sorts of reminders of the near-fatal claims by many in the press relating to Iranian nukes. Sure to get attention are the scare stories in the summer of 2005 after "proof" of an Iranian nuke program somehow surfaced on a certain laptop, proudly unveiled by offiicials and bought by many in the media then as firm evidence (and now debunked, like much of the "proof" of Iraqi WMD provided by defectors a few years back).

Wth much effort, I've already found this beauty from David Brooks of The New York Times from Jan. 22, 2006, when he declared that "despite administration hopes, there is scant reason to believe that imagined Iranian cosmopolitans would shut down the nuclear program, or could if they wanted to, or could do it in time - before Israel forced the issue to a crisis point. This is going to be a lengthy and tortured debate, dividing both parties. We'll probably be engaged in it up to the moment the Iranian bombs are built and fully functioning."

As recently as this past June, Thomas Friedman of The Times wrote: "Iran is about to go nuclear."

Even more recently, on October 23, 2007, Richard Cohen (like Brooks and Friedman, a big backer of the attack on Iraq) of The Washington Post, wrote: "Sadly, it is simply not possible to dismiss the Iranian threat. Not only is Iran proceeding with a nuclear program, but it projects a pugnacious, somewhat nutty, profile to the world."

More in this vein is sure to come: I found those three quotes without even breaking a sweat. At least Friedman, Brooks and Cohen back some kind of diplomacy in regard to Iran, unlike many of their brethren.

Another Post columnist, Jim Hoagland, exactly one month ago summarized his year-long travels and study surrounding this issue, declaring "unmistakable effort by Iran to develop nuclear weapons....That Iran has gone to great, secretive lengths to create and push forward a bomb-building capability is not a Bush delusion." He added the warning that "time is running out on the diplomatic track."

One week before that, reporting on his trip to Moscow, Hoagland noted Putin's doubts that Tehran will be able to turn enriched uranium into a usable weapon -- but called that failure "implausible."

We'd be remiss if we left out William Kristol, the hawk's hawk on Iran, who for the July 14, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard called for a "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

As often the case, Salon.com's popular blogger, Glenn Greenwald, may have gotten there first. A longtime critic of The Washington Post editorial page and its editor, Fred Hiatt, he has already happily reprinted a few choice passages from the past.

Here is the latest, from a Sept. 26, 2007 editorial in the Post, which flatly denounced Iran's "race for a bomb":

"As France's new foreign minister has recognized, the danger is growing that the United States and its allies could face a choice between allowing Iran to acquire the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and going to war to prevent it.

"The only way to avoid facing that terrible decision is effective diplomacy -- that is, a mix of sanctions and incentives that will induce Mr. Ahmadinejad's superiors to suspend their race for a bomb. ...
Even if Tehran provides satisfactory answers, its uranium enrichment -- and thus its progress toward a bomb -- will continue. That doesn't trouble Mr. ElBaradei, who hasn't hidden his view that the world should stop trying to prevent Iran from enriching uranium and should concentrate instead on blocking U.S. military action ...

"European diplomats say they are worried that escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, if fueled by more sanctions, could lead to war. What they don't make clear is how the government Mr. Ahmadinejad represents will be induced to change its policy if it has nothing to fear from the West."

Greenwald also resurrects Post editorial quotes in this vein going back to 2005, along with this choice snippet from a September online interview with Kenneth Pollack, whose complete wrongheadedness on Iraqi WMD somehow has not kept him from remaining a darling of the press as an expert on Iran's nukes and other Middle East issues:

"Q. How compelling is the evidence that Iranians are developing a nuclear weapons program?

"POLLACK: Obviously, the evidence is circumstantial, but it is quite strong."

I'll provide other examples of pundit malfeasance as they surface.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greg Mitchell ([email protected]) is editor of E&P. His book on Iraq and the media, "So Wrong for So Long," will published in March by Union Square Press. He blogs at: http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/

Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran
Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

JERUSALEM ?- Israeli officials, who've been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn't resumed trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel's Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn't deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

"It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know, it has probably since revived it," Barak said.

"Even after this report, the American stance will still focus on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear capability," Olmert said. "We will expend every effort along with our friends in the U.S. to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons."

Probably no country felt more blindsided than Israel by the announcement Monday that 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, in a stunning reassessment, had concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003 and with "moderate confidence" that it hadn't restarted that program as of mid-2007.

For years, Israel has been at the forefront of international efforts to isolate Iran, with Israeli intelligence estimates warning that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear "point of no return," an ominous assessment that often fueled calls for a military strike.

Israeli officials also have sought to isolate Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, citing his calls for Israel's destruction and his skepticism that the Holocaust took place.

The U.S. intelligence finding said that evidence "suggests" that Iran isn't as determined as U.S. officials thought to develop a nuclear weapon and that a diplomatic approach that included economic pressure and some nod to Iranian goals for regional influence might persuade Iran to continue to suspend weapons development.

On Tuesday morning, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper called the U.S. findings "a blow below the belt." An analysis in the competing Haaretz newspaper suggested that Israel might come to be viewed as a "panic-stricken rabbit" and said that the U.S. intelligence estimate established "a new, dramatic reality: The military option, American or Israeli, is off the table, indefinitely."

"This is definitely a blow to attempts to stop Iran from becoming nuclear because now everybody will be relaxed and those that were reluctant to go ahead with harsher sanctions will now have a good excuse," said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University.

The estimate created an awkward situation for Israeli leaders, who mostly tried to sidestep direct criticism of the Bush administration.

Olmert sought to focus on the report's finding that Iran had been deterred in 2003 from pursuing its nuclear weapons program by international pressure. That, said Olmert, made continued sanctions essential.

Barak was tougher and promised that the report wouldn't influence Israeli policy.

"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," he said.

Israeli officials also highlighted where the U.S. and Israeli assessments agree.

They noted that while the latest U.S. assessment said that the earliest Iran was likely to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb was 2010, Israeli assessments weren't dramatically different, finding that Iran could develop the workings for a nuclear bomb by 2009.

Gerald Steinberg, the chairman of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University, suggested that the findings might increase the chances that Israel will attack Iran because they reduce the chances that the United States will act.

"I think it may introduce a lot of stress in the Israeli-American relationship," he said.

But Emily Landau, the director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, said it would be very difficult for Israel to launch an attack without explicit support from the United States.

"If Israel were to carry out a military action, it would have to be in coordination with the United States, so if the United States is moving away from that option, it would have implications for Israel as well," she said.
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(McClatchy special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this report from Jerusalem.)

Bush defends Iran policy amid doubts on new U.N. sanctions
Bush defends Iran policy amid doubts on new U.N. sanctions
By Jonathan S. Landay - McClatchy Newspapers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

WASHINGTON ?- President Bush worked the phones Tuesday to salvage his hard-line policy toward Iran, lobbying foreign leaders for tougher economic sanctions despite a new U.S. intelligence report that concluded that the Islamic republic halted its secret nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Several U.S. officials and experts, however, said that the new National Intelligence Estimate has upended Bush's policy and erased any justification for threatening military strikes. The president will now find it difficult to persuade Russia and China ?- and even America's European allies ?- to impose new sanctions on Iran, even though it refuses to heed United Nations demands to stop enriching uranium, they said.

"A new resolution is going to be very hard to get, if not impossible," said a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Bush showed no sign of backing down.

"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush insisted a day after the release of the report, which contradicted a 2005 finding that Tehran had an active nuclear weapons program. "The policy remains the same."

Asked at a news conference if he was maintaining his threat to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Bush replied, "The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table."

He said that the new intelligence finding provides a "rare opportunity for us to rally the international community" behind new sanctions and that he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been "working the phones" with foreign leaders.

The report, though, has dealt another blow to Bush's credibility ?- which already was low over his false claims about illicit weapons in Iraq ?- because he was aware of the findings when he warned on Oct. 17 that Iran's quest for nuclear weapons could ignite World War III.

Two other U.S. officials indicated that the administration could be forced to adopt a less confrontational policy to maintain a semblance of international unity on Iran. That shift could entail the United States joining European powers in talks with Tehran.

"One of the big things that has been a glaring omission (in U.S. policy) is the lack of face-to-face, even quiet, secret, negotiations," said one U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "It wouldn't surprise me if that were to change."

"We might get to a point where that would be true, but we're not there yet," said an administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

In an interview with McClatchy on Nov. 23, Iran's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency outlined a diplomatic resolution that included U.S. acknowledgment that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, which the new NIE appeared to do. In response, Iran would comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment, said Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh.

"We could suspend nuclear enrichment," he said. "We did it before for two-and-a-half years."

Bush discussed the NIE in a 40-minute phone call Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been playing an increasingly high-profile role in efforts to find a diplomatic solution, including making the first visit to Iran by a Russian leader in decades.

Putin later held talks with Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and told him before the meeting began: "We expect that your programs in the nuclear sphere will be open, transparent and be conducted under control of the authoritative international organization."

There have been other moves of late:

Iran has released several Iranian-American detainees, the United States has freed half the Iranians it was holding in Iraq, and U.S. officials have said that Iran has reduced shipments of arms to anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq as part of an effort to stabilize its violence-torn neighbor.

Iran, which hid its nuclear activities from U.N. inspectors for 18 years, celebrated the NIE as a vindication of its claims that its program is strictly to produce low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants.

"The U.S. administration's previous allegations against Iran have been baseless and fabricated," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Both China and Russia, which have significant commercial interests in Iran, have opposed any new international sanctions, and it appears that they will continue to do so.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency as noting Iran's "correct mood" on fulfilling a pact with the IAEA to disclose all aspects of its nuclear activities.

China's ambassador to the United Nations, Guangya Wang, indicated that Beijing may balk at a third resolution on sanctions, saying, "I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed."

But Bush insisted Tuesday that Iran remains a threat. He cited its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which could produce highly enriched uranium that could be used in nuclear weapons.

"I view this report as a warning signal," Bush said. "And the reason why it's a warning signal is that they could restart it. The thing that would make a restarted program effective and dangerous is the ability to enrich uranium, the knowledge of which could be passed on to a hidden program."
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(Warren P. Strobel contributed.)

I'm feeling a little uneasy about all of this.

Either you trust and believe your intelligence services or you don't. They obviously dropped the ball on Iraq's WMD programs, which leads many people to question their accuracy today.

But I do not support believing their reports when they say something you want to hear, and not supporting their reports when they say something you do not want to hear.