A horse of a different color
U.S. intelligence has determined that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 but believes it is continuing to develop technical capabilities that could be used for building a bomb, a government report said on Monday. The latest National Intelligence Estimate released by the Bush administration also said Iran would likely be capable of producing enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon “sometime during the 2010-2015 time-frame.”
UPDATE
Some text from the report
It was over three years ago that discussions of a point of no return on Iran’s capabilities began to surface. This new news is an absolutely stunning development with far ranging consequences. Stratfor speculated:
Perhaps the Iranians are ready to deal, and so decided to open up their facility for the Americans to see. Still, regardless of what the Iranians opened up, some would have argued that the United States was given a tour only of what the Iranians wanted them to see. There is a mention in the report that any Iranian program would be covert rather than overt, and that might reflect such concerns. However, all serious nuclear programs are always covert until they succeed. Nothing is more vulnerable than an incomplete nuclear program.
We are struck by the suddenness of the NIE report. Explosive new intelligence would have been more hotly contested. We suspect two things. First, the intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program consisted of a great number of pieces, many of which were inherently ambiguous and could be interpreted in multiple ways. Second, the weight of evidence for there being an Iranian nuclear program was shaded by the political proclivities of the administration, which saw the threat of a U.S. strike as intimidating Iran, and the weapons program discussion as justifying it. Third, the change in political requirements on both sides made a new assessment useful. This last has certainly been the case in all things Middle Eastern these past few days on issues ranging from the Palestinians to Syria to U.S. forces in Iraq — so why should this issue be any different?
If this thesis is correct, then we should start seeing some movement on Iraq between the United States and Iran. Certainly the major blocker from the U.S. side has been removed and the success of U.S. policies of late should motivate the Iranians. In any case, the entire framework for U.S.-Iranian relations would appear to have shifted, and with it the structure of geopolitical relations throughout the region.
Of course, one question lingers above all others: why is this new intelligence inherently any more reliable than yesterday’s? Those who have suspicions of this nature may ponder them with Thomas Joscelyn and Norman Podhoretz.