Don’t Bomb Iran

extract:
from WP article about the the official US National Intelligence
intelligence view in August 2005:

“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.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080101453_pf.html

Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb
U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration Statements

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.”