BUSH/CHENEY DELAY NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT ON IRAN BECAUSE N.I.E. FINDS NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM SINCE 2003

Here's another case about intelligence made to fit around the Bush/Cheney Iran policy. Because they disagreed with its conclusions, Bush and Cheney delayed the release of the National Intelligence Estimate for 2006. It has only just been released. The NIE's report says that Iran discontinued any program to build a nuclear weapon back in 2003, Walter Pincus reports today on The Washington Post web site.

Writes Pincus:


"Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure, and while it continues to develop an enriched uranium program, it apparently has not resumed moving toward a nuclear capability, according to a consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community released today by Director of National Intelligence John M. McConnell.

"The assessment states "with moderate confidence" that "Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program" as of mid-2007, but suggests that Tehran continues to keep that option open.

""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," according to one of the key judgments of the new assessment. Two years ago, the intelligence community said publicly that it had "high confidence that Iran was currently determined to have nuclear weapons," a senior intelligence official said today.

"After that assessment was released, the community increased its clandestine and open collection of information about Iran's program, actions that led to today's reassessment, the officials said.

"The major shift in the intelligence community's judgment about Iran's nuclear weapons intentions is contained in unclassified material from a new, classified National Intelligence Estimate sent to Capitol Hill today. The document represents the consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence community."

Yet from 2003 to the present, George Bush and Dick Cheney have been beating the drums of war itching to start a war against Iran on the basis that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Thanks to Amanda at ThinkProgress.com for cataloging the sorry record of Bush/Cheney and neo-cons in accusing Iran and its leaders of trying to develop nuclear weapons.


Thanks again to Amanda at ThinkProgress, here's Cheney on Iran's nuclear threats just two months ago:

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. . . . The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]

ThinkProgress also points at at a story in the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS). IPS ran an article back on November 8, 2007, by Gareth Porter detailing the inter-administration fight between Dick Cheney and the Rice/Gates group.


Writes Porter:


"A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers."

After learning today of the NIE's conclusions that Iran has desisted pursuing nuclear weapons since 2003, I can understand why the NIE's report has been held up. Bush and Cheney wanted the NIE to bless their suspicions to the contrary that Iran was indeed engage in building nuclear bombs. But the folks at the NIE refused to go along. If they had, it would be deja vu all over again, reproducing exactly what happened to the intelligence services back in 2002 when they rolled over for Bush/Cheney and came out with garbage about Iraq's arsenal of WMD.

Porter continues in his report:

"Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007. Negroponte had angered the neoconservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."


"Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005. Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Iran's nuclear programme was nearing the "point of no return" -- an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.

"Frank J. Gaffney, a protégé of neoconservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was "absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons". "