The Fog of Peace

Is Tehran pursuing Nuclear weapons? Depends on who you ask and when you ask it. Opponents of hawkish foreign policy are heralding the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that now holds that Iran dropped its nuclear weaponization program four years ago. This is, of course, the same intelligence community that had consistently said the opposite up till now. And it is also the same intelligence community that emphatically asserted that Saddam had WMDs when, apparently, he didn't.

If Saddam could intentionally mislead the world into thinking he had WMDs, why should we be so sure that Tehran could not do the same in the opposite direction? Anyone who has read Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor, Warning and Decision knows that the clutter of ambiguous signals is difficult to clarify before it is too late, but painfully easy to reconstruct after.

Two years ago, the NIE stated high confidence that the program was operational. Today, it states with high confidence that it is not:

"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," a declassified summary of the new National Intelligence Estimate stated. Two years ago, the intelligence community said in contrast it had "high confidence that Iran currently is determined to have nuclear weapons."

The new estimate, prepared by the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, applied the same "high confidence" label to a judgment that suspected Iranian military efforts to build a nuclear weapon were suspended in 2003 and said with "moderate confidence" that it had remained inactive since then.

Even if Iran were to restart its program now, the country probably could not produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon before the middle of the next decade, the assessment stated. It also expressed doubt about whether Iran "currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

So we seem to be sure that the program was stopped in 2003 and kinda hoping that it wasn't restarted. I've seen no indication from Iran that they are any less inclined to flex their apocalyptic muscles, and no indication from Europe that they are inclined to do anything about it. Why Iran would drop its program without any real pressure is puzzling.

At the very least, after the intelligence community's failures on Iraq, I'd say the smart money is on agnosticism here.