AnalysisRevelations about Iran's facility raise questions about U.S. intelligence

Published 28 September 2009

Both the 2003 “slam dunk” assertion about Iraq’s WMDs, and the 2007 NIE’s conclusion that Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons work, were absurdities; we should worry about the fact that they came to the surface — and influenced policy

A year-and-half-ago (“Analysis: U.S. Still Fighting for Sanctions on Iran, But with a Weaker Hand,” 19 February 2008 HSNW) we commented on the Bush administration’s November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which claimed, implausibly, that in 2003 Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapon. We did not mince words, saying that “This conclusion, of course, is nonsense.” We continued:

The Bush administration shot itself in the foot by releasing a confusing and partially misleading intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapon activities; the administration dealt a near-fatal blow to the effort to intensify economic sanctions on Iran, instead creating a situation in which the world will either have to accept a nuclear-armed Iran or go to war to stop it.

The strange, misleading, and poorly-timed NIE dealt a near-mortal blow to the administration’s own efforts to continue and intensify the economic sanctions on Iran. The administration thus contributed to the creation of a situation in which it is more likely than not that the world will either have to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or go to war to stop it. With its own inadvertent weakening of the case for economic sanctions (Iran, after all, had “halted” the work of a small element of its nuclear weapon program), this middle option of imposing penalties short of war on Iran is becoming less feasible by the day.

Some readers wrote us to say that we exaggerated the damage the 2007 NIE did to U.S. policy vis-a-vis Iran. We have support for our contention. This past Saturday, David Sanger and William Broad commented on the recent revelations about Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facility (“U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’,” 27 September 2009 New York Times). The authors wrote:

In May 2008, the atomic agency in Vienna issued an uncharacteristically blunt demand for more information from Tehran and, even more uncharacteristically, disclosed the existence of 18 secretly obtained documents suggesting Iran’s high level of interest in atom bombs.

But the wording of the public portion of the 2007 United States National Intelligence Estimate had already frozen the effort to force Iran to reveal more. Its conclusion that weapons design work was halted in 2003 was a surprise that ended talk of sanctions.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the report an exoneration.

The CIA, under relentless pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, corrupted its own analysis process and produced “slam dunk” reports about how Saddam Hussein had “reconstituted” Iraq’s WMD capabilities. There were no WMDs in Iraq, and no WMD capabilities had been reconstituted.

Four years later, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Iran had “halted” its work on nuclear weapons — only later to discover a hidden Iranian nuclear weapon facility.

One does not have to be a Republican or a Democrat, or a dove or a hawk on foreign policy issues, to be puzzled — deeply worried, in fact — about the quality of U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis processes. This is not to question the dedication and professionalism of the thousands who work in the U.S. intelligence agencies. It is, rather, to raise questions about possible structural flaws which allow for such absurdities as “slam dunK” and Iran’s “halting” its nuclear weapon program to come to the surface — and influence policy.