It is difficult to overstate the policy and institutional significance of the new NIE report (excerpted below) declaring with “high confidence” that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. For starters, the new report is a conscious and stunning, 180 degree turn from the previous NIE of 2005. That 2005 report stated “with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons.” You can get a bad case of whiplash from all the “high confidence” in the US intelligence community. If that community is possessed of integrity, some very convincing information must have come to light in the last two years.

Moreover, the new report seems totally out of step with diplomatic initiatives of the very recent past. Indeed, it was only a few days ago that things seemed to be heading for some kind of showdown, with Iran taking a new, ultra hard line, diplomats calling Iran’s posture a “disaster,” and even China getting on board the sanctions bandwagon. But now everything seems to have changed.

Thus, one main question about the report is determining whether (a) a strategy is being acted out but not announced by the Bush administration, or (b) dangerous bumbling and internecine warfare is taking place among the administration and the intelligence community.

We note certain of the commentary in the mainstream media that surmises that previous Bush policies have been undercut by this new report. Here’s the Washington Post:

A Blow to Bush’s Tehran Policy — President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration’s alarming rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush’s effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

And the New York Times:

An administration that had cited Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as the rationale for an aggressive foreign policy — as an attempt to head off World War III, as President Bush himself put it only weeks ago — now has in its hands a classified document that undercuts much of the foundation for that approach…

Seldom do those agencies vindicate irascible foreign leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who several weeks ago said there was “no evidence” that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, dismissing the American claims as exaggerated.

The biggest change, though, could be its effect on President Bush’s last year in office, as well as on the campaign to replace him. Until Monday, 2008 seemed to be a year destined to be consumed, at least when it comes to foreign policy, by the prospects of confrontation with Iran…

The White House struggled to portray the estimate as a validation of Mr. Bush’s strategy, a contention that required swimming against the tide of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s occasionally apocalyptic language.

We suppose that the Post and the Times could be correct, and that President Bush has been blindsided and undercut by the report, and that seems possible but somewhat unlikely to us. One of the things most striking about the NIE is that it must have taken a massive amount of coordination for a significant period of time, and that its conclusions must have been known considerably in advance of its being published. Certainly, for example, President Bush must have made his World War III comment on October 17 knowing what the NIE would say; indeed he knew what the findings were months before the formal November 28 briefing.

Perhaps (as with the much derided and ridiculed Annapolis conference?) things may not be as they seem on the surface. Is it possible that a strategy is being acted out and not announced? Stratfor certainly thinks so:

There are only two reasons the U.S. government would choose to issue a report that publicly undermines the past four years of its foreign policy: a deal has been struck, or one is close enough that an international diplomatic coalition is no longer perceived as critical. This level of coordination across all branches of U.S. intelligence could not happen without the knowledge and approval of the CIA director, the secretaries of defense and state, the national security adviser and the president himself. This is not a power play; this is the real deal.

The full details of any deal are unlikely to be made public any time soon because the U.S. and Iranian publics probably are not yet ready to consider each other as anything short of foes. But the deal…will allow for a permanent deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq to provide minimal national security for Iraq, but not in large enough numbers to be able to launch a sizable attack against Iran. It will allow for the training and equipping of the Iraqi military forces so that Iraq can defend itself, but not so much that it could boast a meaningful offensive force. It will integrate Iranian intelligence and military personnel into the U.S. effort so there are no surprises on either side…

The Iranians do not want the Americans to assist in the rise of another militaristic Sunni power in Baghdad — the last one inflicted 1 million Iranian casualties during 1980-1988 war. The United States does not want to see Iran dominate Iraq and use it as a springboard to control Arabia; that would put some 20 million barrels per day of oil output under a single power…

As powerful as Iran is, it is the runt of the neighborhood when one looks past the political lines on maps and takes a more holistic view. Sunnis outnumber Shia many times over, and Arabs outnumber Persians. Indeed, Persians make up only roughly half of Iran’s population, making Tehran consistently vulnerable to outside influence. Simply put, the United States and Iran — because of the former’s strategy and the latter’s circumstances — are natural allies…

A United States that does not need to contain Iran is a United States that can leverage an Iran that very much wishes to be leveraged. That potentially puts the Arabs on the defensive on topics ranging from investment to defense. The Arabs tend to get worried whenever the Americans or the Iranians look directly at them; that is nothing compared to the emotions that will swirl the first time that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.S. President George W. Bush shake hands…the heavy lifting has already been done and some level of understanding on Iraq’s future already is in place. All that remains is working out the “details.”

We tend to think that there indeed is a strategy being acted out but not announced, and perhaps it does involve a deal on Iraq, as well as a balancing of American interests among the Sunni and Shiite worlds. It’s too soon to make any final judgments. And of course, given the performance of the administration on a number of other issues, including previous WMD estimates, there is always the possibility that this is just a big screw-up. Haaretz:

The noise that was heard last night in Tehran, according to credible reports, was a hearty Persian laugh after looking at the U.S. intelligence service’s website. The document’s eight pages…enable the Ayatollas’ nuclear and operations officials and the heads of the Revolutionary Guards to reach this soothing conclusion - from their point of view: The Americans have no understanding of what is really happening in Iran’s nuclear program. They have no solid information, they have no high-level agents and they have nothing more than a mix of guesswork and chatter. The dissemblance and concealment have succeeded, and the real dispute is not between Washington and Tehran, but within the U.S. administration itself…

The CIA is so angry with Bush, it seems, that it is ready to go to great lengths in order to help another president. Not Ahmadinejad, God forbid, but the next president in Washington. The result is likely to be the opposite: Higher Iranian militancy along with Bush and Cheney’s determination to act - regardless of what the intelligence agencies say.

It is just too early to say whether alternative (a) or (b) above is correct. If (a) is correct, it shouldn’t take too long for events to play out, and some framework or agreements to be announced. If (b) is correct, and the NIE is a political document, possibly deeply flawed in its judgments, the consequences could be grave, and not just for the current administration.

UPDATE

f course, it is possible that the revised estimates have been made on evidence as flimsy as intercepted notes of a few meetings and the reinterpretation of some data from a laptop. Heaven help us if that’s what is really going on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 9:50 am and is filed under Democrats, General, Iran, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.