Posted on 12/15/2007 4:40:45 PM PST by nuconvert
No Nukes, No War
By David Frum
December 12, 2007
America's new intelligence estimate on Iran changes nothing--and it changes everything. Last week, the Bush administration released large portions of its latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear program. The NIE concluded that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
The NIE cautioned that there remained much to worry about. Iran could revive its weapons program at any time. And Iran continues to enrich uranium to levels that could serve as the fuel for a nuclear weapon.
Still, the NIE went far to lift the mood of imminent threat. The Iranian nuclear problem remains a huge problem--but maybe not an urgent problem.
Change in Iran should be the goal of U.S. policy. Economic pressure and communications operations should be the methods.
Some have questioned the value of the NIE. No question, intelligence is a very imperfect art. Intelligence agencies often have institutional biases. The CIA in particular has been waging a long-term insurgency against the Bush administration through damaging leaks.
But an NIE is not a CIA product. An NIE represents the consensus view of the 16 U.S. national intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the high-tech listening specialists at the National Security Agency. This particular NIE seems to owe a great deal to information provided by Ali Reza Asghari, the Iranian deputy minister of defense who defected to the United States in February, 2007. It would be very unwise and irresponsible to mark the NIE down as the work of disgruntled internal political opponents in the bureaucracy.
The NIE is a foundational political fact that will make it politically impossible for the Bush administration to launch a strike at Iran's nuclear facilities.
Now in one sense, this changes nothing. Hype aside (and as I've been writing for 18 months) the Bush administration has never had any real intention of striking the Iranian nuclear facilities. The new intelligence estimate makes it politically impossible to do something that was not going to happen anyway.
Yet the estimate also changes everything. So long as the world believed that the administration might strike Iran, nobody attached much weight to the administration's utter lack of non-military policies toward the Islamic Republic.
But with force off the table, suddenly the world is noticing that nothing much else is on the table.
Into the void have rushed a thousand policy suggestions. (For those interested, I posted my own at frum.nationalreview.com last Wednesday.)
But few of these suggestions begin with a clear view of what the West needs to accomplish in Iran.
The problem in Iran is not the regime's weaponry: It is the regime itself.
Even without nuclear weapons, Iran supports terrorism worldwide. Between 1992 and 1996, Iran embarked on a terrorist rampage, carrying out attacks that killed some 200 people in Argentina, Germany and a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, among other targets. The terror campaign temporarily subsided after 1996, only to resume in 2001, this time targeting first Israel and then Iraq and Afghanistan.
The idea that there is some kind of deal to be done with this regime is highly unrealistic.
The Western goal, rather, should be to drive a wedge between the regime and its disaffected population--in the way that the Reagan administration worked to isolate and discredit Eastern European communist regimes in the1980s.
That means reassuring the Iranian population that the United States intends no violence against them--while maintaining economic pressure against the regime and supporting dissident broadcasting and political movements.
Despite rising oil prices, the Iranian regime is in terrible economic shape. (That may be one reason it suspended its costly nuclear program.) Wages are stagnant, inflation is worsening, unemployment is high, gasoline is in short supply. Foreign investors shun Iran not only because of economic sanctions, but also because the country offers a dangerous and unpredictable business environment.
With oil at $100 a barrel, the regime can probably afford to buy enough support to survive. But as it becomes clear that Washington is not planning to attack Iran, that price should decline--as oil prices always do when threat of war subsides. At $60, $50, $40, $30, the regime becomes steadily less durable; the population increasingly impatient; and the chances for change increasingly promising.
Change should be the goal of U.S. policy. Economic pressure and communications operations should be the methods. A "grand bargain" is the dead end to avoid. And war should be seen as what it always is: a sign of policy failure, rather than a tactic to be used for failure to imagine anything better.
David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.
Only reason there is any interest in the region and anybody there but bloodthirsty tribesmen is the oil. Unless the oil gives out nothing will change but the nationality of the ululators.
The NIA is an Intelligence ESTIMATE!
Now let me see, they said Iraq had WMD. And they did. Just not to the degree that would have satisfied the critics now.
On the other hand, if intelligence was wrong with Iraq, why should we be led to believe that the intelligence community is any better at ESTIMATING a nuke program in Iran?
Or was this an opportunity by some disgruntled State Dept. Associate of Joe Wilson, Er Mr Valerie Plame to take a shot at Bush to score some political points with the Commiecrats?
Hmmm Hmmmm.
The NIE immediately prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis was dead wrong, too.
Another observation in the article, it says Iran nukes are a concern but not an urgent concern.
Just how late in the game does nukes in Iran become an urgent concern? After the election??
This is more political than anything to do with national security and I smell a Demo-rat.
Iran knows that Europe doesn't represent a problem for her.They know that Europe is spineless.And even before this report Iran wasn't afraid of us.They knew that there were enough fellow travelers here to render a strike by us out of the question.
But Iran fears Israel even if she claims otherwise.And Iran has damn good reason to fear Israel because if provoked she won't fight with one hand behind her back....if ya catch my drift.
The US, our allies, iran and their allies are practicing Economic Warfare. There is always Economic Warfare before the shooting, or in this case, the missles launch. This author could use a lesson in History 101.
It goes without saying that there are more than a few Ted Halls and Klaus Fuchses working for the CIA,etc.Nope,we can't have the big,bad war-mongering United States picking on the poor,peace-loving mullahs of Tehran.
Well everyone except the inspectors who actually looked. The threat of Iraq/Iran to this country is highly overrated. China is a much more immediate problem.
Most of the world isn't. It's too busy having a horselaugh at the Bush administration's expense under the blithe assumption that this was some sort of repudiation of its policies. That it was not.
And so the negotiations will continue with the same futility as before. And the sanctions will be firmly blocked by those with economic interests they might threaten, secure in the "knowledge" that they can get away with them for a bit longer. The IAEA will continue its empty pomposities until the first mushroom cloud appears, at which time it will have a cover story blaming the United States firmly in place.
In short, nothing much has changed. Non-proliferation is a joke, and I don't see why the U.S. (among others) should fund those who make a living pretending otherwise.
All which is left is to watch the play or observe the moves.
Frum is not a democrat
Some interesting lines from this new “intelligence2.
1 Bush leaves decision to next President, hoping avoidance of war now will help Republicans in election
2 Bush is leaving any decision till the Democratic Candidates have pinned themselves to a non nuclear Iran Policy.
3 Bush leaves it to Europeans, who are nearer Iran and have most to fear from current Iranian missiles.
4 Bush lulling Iran/Syria till Bashir and his mates get indicted for Lebanese murders.
5 Bush will let Iran go nuclear, as they are more of a threat to the Russians than the US.
6 Bush calls the Iranian bluff. If the Iranians nuke Israel, Israel will nuke the Iranians.
7 Bush lulls Iran while the British extricate themselves from Basra, the Shiite part of Iraq, otherwise Brits could have ended up Shiite hostages.
8 The Israelis already took out the Iranian/Syrian nuclear capability with recent airstrike on Syria.
9 The US knows the Iranian defector is a plant and is stringing the Iranians along. The Iranians are probably following Russian advice with the defection thing. Leads to dissention if the US Intelligence Service, with some believing the defector, and some not.
10 The US already knows what it is going to do, and is spreading dis-information along the way.
12 The NIE Estimate said Iran stopped nuclear weapons programme from 2003 till mid-2007, but can’t say what happened since. This leaves open the possibility that they restarted it.
My two penny worth. Both Bush and Rice have said repeatedly on the Record, that they will not allow a Nuclear armed Iran, and the Iranians have repeatedly shown by their actions that they are aiming for Nuclear Weapons Capability.
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