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The
war machines are geared up again and this time we need to be more vigilance,
demand accuracy and accept no false claims. Everything you ever wanted to know about the
Iranian nuclear program but were afraid to ask? Iran
and its nuclear program are going to be a big issue this year. So it makes sense
to know something about it. Clearly, the Iranians are engaged in a major
nuclear research program. Is it for weapons? If it is, how close are they to
producing them? (Contrary to the
impression you'd get from reading a number of your more antic columnists, the
US intelligence community believes that the Iranians are roughly a decade
away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Charles Krauthammer says it's just a matter of months. You decide
who to believe.) So next week, from Monday through Thursday, we're going
to have 2 arms control experts, Paul
Kerr of the Arms Control Association and Dr.
Jeffrey Lewis of Armscontrolwonk.com. They'll be blogging about the technical capacity of the
Iranian nuclear effort, what it's for, whether it's any near to produce a
nuclear weapon and other related topics.
They also want to answer your questions. So we've set up a thread over at TPMCafe where you can pose
questions for them to answer next week. From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo
(TPM), for those viewing in text only, the url is http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/21/03741/4512 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here is the news
reporting mentioned above regarding Iran’s disputed timeline. There are good
reasons to be skeptical of both sides - the new president of Iran seems to be claiming
a divine mission for Iran - and the now familiar political plays by Bush
administration war hawks. - KwC Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb By
Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, August 2, 2005; A01 A major U.S.
intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from
manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the
previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand
knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which
represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful
public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not
offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The
new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear
ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved
diplomatically but that "all options
are on the table." The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence community
views as credible indicators that Iran's military is conducting clandestine work.
But the sources said there is no information linking those projects directly to
a nuclear weapons program. What is clear is that Iran, mostly through its
energy program, is acquiring and mastering technologies that could be diverted
to bombmaking. The estimate expresses
uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to build a
nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said. Still, a senior intelligence official
familiar with the findings said that "it
is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices,
Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons." At no time in the past three years has the
White House attributed its assertions about Iran to U.S. intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the run-up to
the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian
concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would require
a large-scale nuclear energy program. The NIE addresses
those assertions and offers alternative views supporting and challenging the
assumptions they are based on. Those familiar with the new judgments, which
have not been previously detailed, would discuss only limited elements of the
estimate and only on the condition of anonymity, because the report is
classified, as is some of the evidence on which it is based. Top policymakers are
scrutinizing the review, several administration officials said, as the White
House formulates the next steps of an Iran policy long riven by infighting and
competing strategies. For
three years, the administration has tried, with limited success, to increase
pressure on Iran by focusing attention on its nuclear program. Those efforts
have been driven as much by international diplomacy as by the intelligence. The NIE, ordered by
the National Intelligence Council in January, is the first major review since
2001 of what is known and what is unknown about Iran. Additional assessments
produced during Bush's first term were narrow in scope, and some were rejected
by advocates of policies that were inconsistent with the intelligence
judgments. One such paper was a 2002 review that former and current officials said
was commissioned by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who was then
deputy adviser, to assess the possibility for "regime change" in Iran.
Those findings described the Islamic republic on a slow march toward democracy
and cautioned against U.S. interference in that process, said the officials,
who would describe the paper's classified findings only on the condition of
anonymity. The new estimate takes
a broader approach to the question of Iran's political future. But it is unable
to answer whether the country's ruling clerics will still be in control by the
time the country is capable of producing fissile material. The administration keeps
"hoping the mullahs will leave before Iran gets a nuclear weapons
capability," said an official familiar with policy discussions. Intelligence estimates
are designed to alert the president of national security developments and help
guide policy. The new Iran findings were described as well documented and well
written, covering such topics as military capabilities, expected population
growth and the oil industry. The assessments of Iran's nuclear program appear
in a separate annex to the NIE known as a memorandum to holders. "It's a full look
at what we know, what we don't know and what assumptions we have," a U.S.
source said. Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February
testimony by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, to be within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995,
U.S. officials have continually estimated Iran to be "within five
years" from reaching that same capability. So far, it has not. The
new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to
produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient
for an atomic weapon, before "early to mid-next decade," according to
four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better
understanding of Iran's technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures. The estimate is for
acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether
Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device, sources said. The timeline is
portrayed as a
minimum designed to reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major
technical obstacles.
It does not take into account that Iran has suspended much of its
uranium-enrichment work as part of a tenuous deal with Britain, France and
Germany. Iran announced yesterday that it intends to resume some of that work
if the European talks fall short of expectations. Sources said the new
timeline also reflects a fading of suspicions that Iran's military has been
running its own separate and covert enrichment effort. But there is evidence of clandestine military
work on missiles and centrifuge research and development that could be linked to a nuclear program,
four sources said. Last month, U.S.
officials shared some data on the missile program with U.N. nuclear inspectors,
based on drawings obtained last November. The documents include design modifications
for Iran's Shahab-3 missile to make the room required for a nuclear warhead,
U.S. and foreign officials said. "If someone has a
good idea for a missile program, and he has really good connections, he'll get
that program through," said Gordon Oehler, who ran the CIA's
nonproliferation center and served as deputy director of the presidential
commission on weapons of mass destruction. "But that doesn't mean there is
a master plan for a nuclear weapon." The commission found
earlier this year that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little"
about Iran, and about North Korea. Much of what is known
about Tehran has been learned through analyzing communication intercepts,
satellite imagery and the work of U.N. inspectors who have been investigating Iran
for more than two years. Inspectors uncovered facilities for uranium conversion
and enrichment, results of plutonium tests, and equipment bought illicitly from
Pakistan -- all of which raised serious concerns but could be explained by an
energy program. Inspectors have found no proof that Iran possesses a nuclear
warhead design or is conducting a nuclear weapons program. The NIE comes more
than two years after the intelligence community assessed, wrongly, in an
October 2002 estimate that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction and was reconstituting his nuclear program. The judgments were
declassified and made public by the Bush administration as it sought to build
support for invading Iraq five months later. At a congressional
hearing last Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national
intelligence, said that new rules recently were imposed for crafting NIEs and
that there would be "a higher tolerance for ambiguity," even if it
meant producing estimates with less definitive conclusions. The Iran NIE, sources
said, includes creative analysis and alternative theories that could explain
some of the suspicious activities discovered in Iran in the past three years.
Iran has said its nuclear infrastructure was built for energy production, not
weapons. Assessed as plausible,
but unverifiable, is Iran's public explanation that it built the program in
secret, over 18 years, because it feared attack by the United States or Israel
if the work was exposed. In January, before the review, Vice President Cheney suggested Iranian nuclear advances were so
pressing that Israel may be forced to attack facilities, as it had done 23
years earlier in Iraq. In an April 2004
speech, John R. Bolton - then the administration's point man on
weapons of mass destruction and now Bush's temporarily appointed U.N.
ambassador -- said: "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer,
it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons." But the level of
certainty, influenced by diplomacy and intelligence, appears to have shifted. Asked in June, after the NIE was done, whether Iran had a
nuclear effort underway, Bolton's successor, Robert G. Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control,
said: "I don't know quite how to answer that because we don't have perfect
information or perfect understanding. But the Iranian record, plus what the
Iranian leaders have said . . . lead us to conclude that we have to be highly
skeptical." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080101453.html |
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