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...The December NIE made headlines the world over for its "key judgment" that in 2003 "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programs" -- programs that previously had been conducted in secret and in violation of Iran's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations. This was a "high confidence" judgment, though the intelligence community had only "moderate confidence" that the program hasn't since been restarted... So it was little wonder that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly called the NIE a "declaration of victory" for Iran's nuclear programs. Diplomatic efforts to pass a third round of U.N. economic sanctions ground to a crawl... Russia decided to...

February 07, 2008, 7:00 a.m. Taking Down the NIEIran is a winning issue for Republicans. By Stanley Kurtz The biggest story of the 2008 campaign so far may not be the fall or rise of any candidate, but the quick and quiet decline of the war on terror as a bone of political contention. Supposedly, the terror war is yesterday’s news, and in any case a losing issue for the Republicans in 2008. Yet this newly congealing conventional wisdom is mistaken. Republicans can win this election on national security. In fact, with its cover story this week, The Economist...

Iran DIDN'T 'Halt' Nuke Program Afterall! Where's the NYTimes' Apology? Remember how the New York Times went apoplectic over last December's NIE estimate that brashly claimed that Iran had suspended their intent to manufacture nuclear arms? It was a front pager and formed the basis of claims that we had illegitimately targeted Iran for rhetorical attacks by many people who opposed the Bush Administration's entire foreign policy regime. Well, as the New York Sun said on the 7th, "what a difference two months make." It appears that the original NIE report was too hasty in its claims that Iran was...

Changing the Iran Nuke Report   By Kenneth R. Timmerman NewsMax.com | Thursday, February 07, 2008 Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell took careful steps to reconsider key portions of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program on Tuesday under sharp questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. McConnell was grilled on the NIE’s disputed conclusion that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure by both Democrats and Republicans. Sen. Kit Bond, the ranking Republican on the committee, chided McConnell for allowing the NIE to be...

The senior US intelligence official on Tuesday stressed that a recent report on Iran had concluded that Tehran had halted only one part of its alleged nuclear weapons programme. Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said the November national intelligence estimate had concluded that Tehran had ceased only efforts to covertly enrich uranium and design nuclear warheads. “The only thing that they’ve halted was nuclear weapons design, which is probably the least significant part of the programme,” he told the Senate intelligence committee.

In all the hullabaloo surrounding Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses, perhaps the most important news story of the day slipped from sight or was reported only in fragments. I have in mind our intelligence community's annual appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There our spy chiefs appeared to report how the war against terror is going. How I wish I had a seat on that committee just for the day. I would have a few questions of my own. One would be, "Have any of you fellows detected the whereabouts of Boy Clinton?" Since the South Carolina primary...

While political pundits, politicians, hundreds of millions of Americans, and millions more around the world watched Super Tuesday results with confused and baited breath yesterday, a bigger and more important story went almost completely unreported. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) presented Congress with yet another National Intelligence Estimate (a summary of opinions presented by a committee of representatives from all 17 American intelligence entities). This National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is uncharacteristically well-written. It coldly, and apolitically presents the good, the bad, the ugly, and surprisingly addressed a long-time suspicion of those who support the war in Iraq about the...

While political pundits, politicians, hundreds of millions of Americans, and millions more around the world watched Super Tuesday results with confused and baited breath yesterday, a bigger and more important story went almost completely unreported. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) presented Congress with yet another National Intelligence Estimate (a summary of opinions presented by a committee of representatives from all 17 American intelligence entities).************************************ NIE Testimony ******************************************** This National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is uncharacteristically well-written. It coldly, and apolitically presents the good, the bad, the ugly, and surprisingly addressed a long-time suspicion of those who support the war in...

The head of American intelligence said Tuesday that it is unclear whether Tehran has returned to its production of nuclear weapons in the past six months, and warned that Iran "would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon" by the end of next year. Speaking two months after an American intelligence report cast doubt on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, National Intelligence Director John Michael McConnell made his remarks during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee to present an annual report on threats to the U.S. A National Intelligence Estimate report released in December said that...

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton wants DNI Michael McConnell to redo the National Intelligence Estimate to properly reflect the threat Iran poses to the region and the US. The do-over should emphasize the dual-use nature of its nuclear program, which Bolton claims got glossed over in the original: Today, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee (and Thursday on the House side) to give the intelligence community's annual global threat analysis. These hearings are always significant, but the stakes are especially high now because of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Criticism of the...

How America's own intelligence services have brought international policy on Iran to the edge of collapse IF YOU are locked eyeball to eyeball with an adversary as wily as Iran, it does not make much sense to do something that emboldens your opponent and sows defeatism among your friends. But that, it is now clear, is precisely what America's spies achieved when they said in December that, contrary to their own previous assessments, Iran stopped its secret nuclear-weapons programme in 2003. Iran's jubilant president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, immediately called the American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) a “great victory” for his country....

The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, as well as the skewed reporting around it, is a sign of the "illegitimate politicization" of the American intelligence establishment, according to former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. The document reportedly said Iran stopped its nuclear weapons production program in 2003. While "Iran's nuclear program is continuing and expanding," Bolton told The Jerusalem Post at a book-signing in a Tel Aviv Steimatzky on Sunday, "the NIE has had a devastating impact on our global efforts to try and constrain Iran." "I know the people who wrote this intelligence estimate," Bolton continued....

Up until a fairly short time ago, scarcely anyone dissented from the assessment offered with “high confidence” by the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] of 2005 that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.”

The head of the United States' missile defense program sought Wednesday to bolster Washington's argument for anti-missile sites in Europe by warning that Iran has sped up development of long-range missiles. Facing tough opposition from Russia and increasing skepticism from Poland, where the US wants to place part of the system, the American officials are trying to convince Europeans that program is crucial to guarding against an emerging threat from Iran. "They are developing missiles today in an accelerated pace," Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said in remarks at the Foreign Ministry in the Czech Republic, where Washington wants to install...

We have had a fairly mixed year. Both good stories and bad were bountiful, and sometimes good and bad news came together to neutralize mega-stories. Take Pakistan, where Pervez Musharraf’s lifting of both his military uniform and his country’s State of Emergency was closely followed by the untimely assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Nobody quite knows what the net effect of these events will be.

The European View on Iran: Fallout from the New U.S. Intelligence Estimate Featuring Neil Crompton, Hans-Peter Hinrichsen, and Nicholas Roche On December 13, 2007, Neil Crompton, Hans-Peter Hinrichsen, and Nicholas Roche addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Crompton is a political counselor at the British embassy who served until recently as Iran coordinator and head of the Iraq Policy Unit at the British Foreign Office. Dr. Hinrichsen, first secretary for political affairs at the German embassy, has long worked on non-proliferation issues. Mr. Roche is a counselor at the French embassy who has focused extensively on the...

I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents, George W. Bush among them, told the American Newsweek magazine in an article published Friday. Citing conversations he had in Israel with officials in Mossad and the Israeli defense establishment, Riedel concluded that "Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened." While some US experts doubt Israel's ability to tackle Iran alone, David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, was quoted by...

Vetting the Iran NIE James Lyons December 20, 2007 The recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear weapon program not only left many questions unanswered but left our friends and allies caught off-base and confused. I am sure they wonder how they are to support efforts for more stringent sanctions against Iran's enrichment program. Let's not forget that Iran's drive to achieve the enrichment of uranium is the key element in its efforts to attain a nuclear weapons program. However, the NIE has had the reverse effect. Russia has now announced it intends to complete construction of the...

Stupid Intelligence on Iran If Tehran did slow its weapons program, Bush policies probably had something to do with it. JAMES SCHLESINGER The release earlier this month of "key judgments" from the National Intelligence Estimate--including the bald assertion "that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program"--has caused both astonishment here at home and consternation overseas, where it has resulted in confusion about America's policy goals and steadiness. Let us stipulate that the intelligence community has acquired evidence sufficiently persuasive to lead it to reverse its prior judgment that Iran was hard at work developing nuclear weapons. For that...

John Bolton, who served as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, spoke with IsraelNationalRadio's Tovia Singer about the recent Bush Administration intelligence report on Iran's nuclear capabilities. The controversial diplomat said the report was more political than intelligence-based, and that it was meant only to undercut President Bush's policies on Iran.