Iran's nuke ambitions

VOA:

A newly released US intelligence document says Iran stopped nuclear-weapons development four years ago, but is keeping its options open. VOA's Paula Wolfson reports White House officials say the new National Intelligence Estimate shows the need for continued pressure on Tehran.

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says Tehran halted a secret nuclear weapons program in late 2003. It says as of mid-2007, the work had not resumed.

The document is at odds with an earlier assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities and aspirations conducted in 2005. The earlier estimate, which represents the highest collective judgments of the U.S. intelligence community, said Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons. The new estimate says Tehran is less determined to produce nuclear weapons than earlier believed.

All the same, the Bush administration says the 2007 report contains plenty of reason to remain concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley says it confirms the existence of an earlier secret nuclear arms development program. He says at the same time, this National Intelligence Estimate shows Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium in defiance of international calls to suspend, and could produce enough for a bomb as soon as late 2009.

"We need to keep the halting of the nuclear weapons program in place," said Stephen Hadley. "We need to achieve the suspension of the enrichment program. And what this NIE says is the best way to do that is to do what we have been doing, which is diplomatic isolation, UN sanctions and other financial pressures, plus the option for negotiations."

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It appears that Libya is not the only country that got the message of the war in Iraq and stopped its nuclear program. Iran appears to have gone into Saddam like stealth mode, keeping things in place as well as the recipe so that it can quickly produce prohibited weapons as soon as the pressure is off.

Harry Reid made the ridiculous statement tonight that we need a diplomatic surge with Iran, as if negotiations on its enrichment program have not been on going for years. Most recently the diplomats involved in the process indicated that they were back to square one because of Iranian intransigence. Does Reid really think that more diplomats are going to make Iran change its plans? The problems with Iran are not from a lack of diplomacy, but a lack of good faith on the part of the Iranians who look at the negotiation process as a vehicle to buy time to put their nuclear cook book together.

The 2005 report was based in part on finding a notebook computer with Iran's bomb plans. It was reported in the NY Times in November 2005.

In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.

The Americans flashed on a screen and spread over a conference table selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead, according to a half-dozen European and American participants in the meeting.

The documents, the Americans acknowledged from the start, do not prove that Iran has an atomic bomb. They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East.

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The comment below makes the mistake liberals have made since 2003 of redefining the word lie to mean something other than what the dictionary says it means. Lie implies bad faith. As the Times story demonstrates there was a good faith reason for believing Iran was up to something in 2005. The debate over whether Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons needs to be done on a civil basis and suggesting that inconsistent reports imply a lie is getting off on the wrong foot.

Cliff May's source thinks anti Bush State Dips pushed the suspect "Key Judgments" in order to thwart action against Iran.

The NY Times story on the latest NIE must have lost its 2005 story down some memory hole because it is not mentioned. So far I have seen not other stories beyond this blog that mention it. It may not fit the template for the current story line at the Times.

Update: CNN reports on the President's remarks explaining why Iran is still a threat.

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"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said, pointing out that Tehran continues to try to enrich uranium for civilian purposes and therefore develop technology that could be used for a weapon.

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That pretty much confirms my own analysis above.