Posted on 12/05/2007 5:10:47 AM PST by SJackson
“Here’s what we know,” President George W. Bush began in response to a question about the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. “We know that they’re still trying to learn how to enrich uranium. We know that enriching uranium is an important step in a country who wants to develop a weapon. We know they had a program. We know the program is halted.”
If the intelligence is right this time, then this last piece of information is good news.
But there’s more to the story, as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley explained a day earlier. “The intelligence community says they do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons,” he cautioned, adding, “The risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons remains a very serious problem.” He then cited the NIE to underscore his point: “Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so.”
In other words, although the clandestine program was apparently halted in 2003, none of America’s 16 intelligence agencies can determine if it’s dead or dormant. “Halted” means paused, and paused means the story is far from over. Indeed, if history is any guide, Iran’s nuclear program is probably as dead as North Korea’s was in the 1990s.
Intelligence, it pays to recall, is a mix of science and art, guesswork and facts, gut instinct and calculation. When humans interpret the motives and actions of other humans, we are bound to get it wrong sometimes.
All of this calls to mind something Donald Rumsfeld once said, something his critics mocked but something that is profound in its simplicity. “The are known knowns; there are things we know we know,” he explained. “There are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
These are the most worrisome, the things men like Ahmadinejad are hatching, the things that cause intelligence analysts to hedge and presidents to worry, the things that start wars.
Predictably, the administration’s critics pounced on the NIE as proof that Washington’s threat of war in the event of Iran’s going nuclear was reckless and unneeded. “They should have stopped the saber rattling; should have never started it,” according to Sen. Barack Obama.
Sen. Joe Biden suggested that Bush might be “one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”
“How could American intelligence agencies have overstated Iran’s intentions…so soon after being reprimanded for making similar errors involving Iraq?” intoned a New York Times piece.
Indeed, it pays to recall that NIEs can be wrong. After all, many of these same critics heaped scorn on the Bush administration for accepting the premise of the 2002 NIE, which concluded that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. One wonders why we should be so certain about this NIE, which includes the ominous caveat that “Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe.”
Plus, it’s worth noting, as Hadley explained, that if this NIE is correct, then it serves to validate the carrot-and-stick approach of the last few years, which has included “intensified international pressure,” “diplomatic isolation,” sanctions, negotiations and the threat of force.
In other words, the “saber rattling” Obama so derides may have actually been useful in persuading Iran and thus avoiding war.
Perhaps purposely, perhaps by happenstance, Europe and the U.S. had been playing good cop/bad cop with Tehran—one offering the prospect of trade and normalization, the other JDAMs and B-2s. Perhaps the game was working, perhaps not.
One thing seems certain: Thanks to the release of this NIE, that game is over. As one Tehran-based analyst told The New York Times, “a military strike by the U.S. might be off the table.” And as Robert Kagan notes, “Fear of American military action was always the primary reason Europeans pressured Tehran. Fear of an imminent Iranian bomb was secondary. Bringing Europeans together in support of serious sanctions was difficult before the NIE. Now it is impossible.”
It’s too bad that we have landed in such an unenviable place, but it’s not surprising.
Americans want their country’s foreign policy to be guileless yet Machiavellian enough to play off the PRC against the USSR, or to back-channel and bluster the world to the brink and back over Cuba. They want it to be as idealistic as Wilson at Versailles or Carter at Camp David but as hard-nosed as TR during the Perdicaris incident or Reagan at Reykjavik. They want it to be compassionate enough to feed Somalia and protect the Kurds and rebuild Western Europe but cold and calculating enough to ignore Nanking and Cambodia and Eastern Europe.
They want their country’s foreign policy to speak softly yet loud enough to call the Soviet Union evil and to condemn apartheid and to denounce the laogai. They want it to wield the big stick—in Dresden and Hiroshima, Korea and Kuwait and Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq—but only in such a way that innocent life is spared.
And they want their country’s foreign policy to keep nukes out of places like Iran, while keeping their sons out of harm’s way. To borrow a phrase from Don Rumsfeld, that may depend not on this president’s or his successor’s foreign policy, but rather on an “unknown unknown.”
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I find it interesring no one is asking what Iran intends to do with all the uranium they are enriching. They don’t have a single nuclear power plant (nor is one under construction) that can use the “fuel”.
bttt
‘I find it interesring no one is asking what Iran intends to do with all the uranium they are enriching. They don’t have a single nuclear power plant (nor is one under construction) that can use the “fuel”.’
I find a news report that Iran’s weapon program was halted in 2003 but later restarted to be credible. If Iran has fooled us into this NIE but is really working on a bomb that is indeed a victory for them. It seems to me that constructing a Little Boy type device shouldn’t be too hard given 2007 technology and information. 13,000 tons of TNT equivalent is still a big bang.
If Iran was really smart it’d obtain some Eastern bloc U–235. That way the radioactive ‘fingerprint’ would point elsewhere after detonation, if covert/terrorist. If Iran were able to do this it could advance its nuclear program by several years in a single stroke. Interesting that 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of illegal Eastern bloc weapons grade U-235 was just captured as it was put up for sale at a cool $1 million. Wikipedia lists U-235 critical mass at 52 kg (for 90% pure? 100%?), for whatever that’s worth - do not try this at home!
bump
I find it interesting why the CIA (central incompetence agency) has not yet been dismantled and replaced with a more competent and less political intelligence agency.
I find it interesting why we elect into office the politicians that we do.
I find it interesting why these pea brained politicians and traitors still have oversight over our intelligence agencies.
I find it interesting why after 911 the governments of Syria and Iran have not yet been toppled.
The way I see it, America is been destroyed from within. Because of greed and nothing else, our politicians are playing a major role in America’s destruction. I used to think that America was too strong to ever fall, not anymore.
For those of us who think things are bad now, just wait until the dimwits take over.
The CIA has always been thus.
I admit I haven’t paid much attention to this nor to the debate about Bush’s foreign policy. To me it was simple. The program supposedly was suspended in 2003. There was one major event in the area in 2003 as well, more to the west. In my little head I just assumed one was related to the other.
Duh. Iran’s own president has come out on REPEATEDLY over the past several years, as recently as this year, and disclosed that they ARE developing a nuclear weapon and had every right to do so.
Where does THAT fit into the NIE?
I was coming up with a theory about this, but ugly facts got in the way. Okay, US Intelligence got information in August. Is that correct? I was thinking that the Israeli raid on the Syrian nuclear (bomb?) plant was in July, but it was on September 6th. So, I can’t tie the breakout of that intelligence to the Israeli raid. Oh well.
This time??? Really? Just because nothing verifiable is ‘possible’ in assessing their nuclear readiness doesn’t mean that they are squeaky clean in their plans and policies for WMD’s.
Does the UN think the everyone in the world is as gullible as their own officials?
Actually the Syrian Nuke Plant was discovered late spring early summer. Israel was going to flatten it during the summer. The Syrians detected the Israeli planning and activity so they raised their state of military readiness. We were all wondering what was going on. The Israelis decided to postpone the flattening because of the Syrian position and because of stalling from the US Intelligent Agencies. The US demanded iron clad proof of the Israeli accusations. So they acquired samples and learned that a shipment from the Norkies was coming. The Israelis forced the decision to flatten it ASAP. The timeline all fits perfect. The US was told what the Syrians were doing during the summer.
Okay, Israel develops this information on the Syrian nuclear facility. Let's say Iran is outsourcing this to Syria to maintain some deniability. Israel tells the US. The US say hang on a minute, let's check out this intelligence. Israel says, okay, but we're not going to wait long.
Fingar and his fellow anti-Bush fanatics at State, CIA, etc., panic, because they think, this will justify an attack on Iran. So, they check the files, come up with this old info, that some Iranian military types were p-o'ed that the Mullahs shut down their nuclear bomb engineering program. The Fingar Gang conceives the idea that this could derail the inevitable take down of Iran.
In the meantime, Israel takes out the Syrian nuclear facility and the NIE comes out. Ahmadinejad declares victory.
Where am I going wrong?
Looks good to me. The scenario fits the puzzle very well.
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