Skeptic
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:34 pm Post subject: US intel. dispells Iranian nuke myth, Israelis challenge |
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| Quote: | US Intelligence agencies say Tehran halted weapons programme in 2003
Guardian 4-12-07
US intelligence agencies undercut the White House yesterday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified yesterday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates. "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," it said.
The disclosure makes it harder for President George Bush, to justify a military strike against Iran before he leaves office next year. It also makes it more difficult to persuade Russia and China to join the US, Britain and France in imposing a new round of sanctions on Tehran.
Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney have been claiming without equivocation that Tehran is bent on achieving a nuclear weapon, with the president warning in October of the risk of a third world war. They were briefed on the national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Wednesday.
The White House national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, at a press conference yesterday, denied there were echoes of the intelligence failure over Iraq's phantom weapons of mass destruction. He said that Iran was "one of a handful of the hardest intelligence targets going" and the new intelligence had only arrived in the past few months. As soon as it did, both the president and Congress had been briefed. He warned that there would be a tendency now to think "the problem is less bad than we thought, let's relax. Our view is that would be a mistake."
The NIE, which pulls together the work of the 16 American intelligence agencies, is entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. It concluded: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme." It had not been restarted as of the middle of this year.
In a startling admission from an administration that regularly portrays Iran as the biggest threat to the Middle East and the world, the NIE said: "We do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." That contradicts the assessment two years ago that baldly stated that Tehran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons".
The British government, which is planning to discuss the report with its US counterparts during the next few days, has also repeatedly said it suspects President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government of seeking a nuclear weapons capability. It will claim that the weapons halt shows that diplomacy - in particular the threat of sanctions - can work.
The weapons halt roughly coincided with a visit by British, French and German foreign ministers to Tehran in October 2003.
The Iranian government has insisted throughout that it is only pursuing a civilian nuclear programme.
Although a halt to the nuclear weapons programme is significant, the NIE is far from a clean bill of health for Iran. Tehran is pushing ahead with its uranium enrichment programme, which has only limited civilian use and could be quickly converted to nuclear military use. The NIE warned that Iran could secure a nuclear weapon by 2010. The US state department's intelligence and research office, one of the agencies involved, said the more likely timescale would be 2013. All the agencies concede that Iran may not have enough enriched uranium until after 2015.
The White House will continue to try to intensify international pressure on Iran. Russia and China, two of the permanent members of the UN security council, have scuppered attempts by the US over the past six months to impose tough new sanctions on Iran.
The decision to publish the NIE is aimed at trying to recover the public credibility lost when the agencies wrongly claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the years leading up to 2003.
http://www.underthecarpet.co.uk/Pages/NewsArticle.php?num=3564 |
report here: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
| Quote: | Israel challenges US findings on nuclear Iran
Guardian 4-12-07
Israel today publicly challenged the US intelligence consensus that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons programme, even as Tehran welcomed the US findings.
Iran claimed its peaceful nuclear intentions were clear after a UN national intelligence estimate (NIE) concluded that Tehran had stopped its nuclear military programme in 2003.
The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said he welcomed the US move to "correct" its previous assertions.
"It's natural that we welcome it when those countries who in the past have questions and ambiguities about this case... now amend their views realistically," he told state radio. "The condition of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities is becoming clear to the world."
Israel, however, contradicted the NIE findings. Its defence minister, Ehud Barak, claimed that Iran had restarted its military nuclear programme.
"It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear programme for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that programme," Barak told army radio.
In its assessment, which was made public yesterday, the US NIE on Iran, a consensus of 16 intelligence agencies, concluded that Iran had suspended its attempt to build a nuclear weapon. The unclassified summary marked an abrupt U-turn in the US view that
Iran was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, undercutting administration warnings about Iran's intentions.
As recently as October, the US president, George Bush, was warning that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to a third world war, while the vice-president, Dick Cheney, threatened Tehran with "serious consequences" if it did not abandon its nuclear programme.
"We are familiar with this American assessment," Barak said. "There are differences in the assessments of different organisations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right."
Barak, the head of the Labour party, is a former Israeli army chief of staff and a former prime minister. Israel has backed US-led efforts at the UN to impose sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Israel has not ruled out military action against Iran, but says it prefers a diplomatic solution. Asked if the new US assessment reduced the likelihood of a US military strike on Iran, Barak said it was "possible".
However, he said: "We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend."
The new US assessment says Iran continues to enrich uranium, and could still manufacture a nuclear weapon some time between 2010 and 2015.
"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," said the report.
Critics of the administration's policy on Iran have seized upon the report to argue against military action.
The intelligence finding removes, "if nothing else, the urgency that we have to attack Iran, or knock out facilities", said Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator. "I don't think you can overstate the importance of this."
The Democrat leader of the US senate, Harry Reid, urged the White House to adjust its policy and pursue "a diplomatic surge" to engage with Iran.
The US intelligence estimate is unfortunate timing for the Bush administration because it could take the steam out of its efforts to push for further sanctions against Iran at the UN.
Britain, however, said it would push for increased international pressure on Iran.
"There's an international community approach to dealing with the Iranian problem," a spokesman for Gordon Brown said. "We will continue to argue for increased pressure on Iran through the [United Nations] security council and the EU."
"We think the report's conclusions justify the actions already taken by the international community to both show the extent of and try to restrict Iran's nuclear programme and to increase pressure on the regime to stop its enrichment and reprocessing activities," the prime minister's spokesman said.
http://www.underthecarpet.co.uk/Pages/NewsArticle.php?num=3567 |
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