The latest on the slow-motion nightmare that is Iran’s nuclear weapons program isn’t too surprising: Tehran claims it’s installing new centrifuges, likely in a new secret facility, to more quickly amass a stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Most of us who have been watching Iran for years understand that Iran’s nuclear weapon is a matter of if not when. Even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps makes no pretense that the program is peaceful as Iran’s toadies have suggested for years. A May 4 posting on gerdab.ir, an IRGC official outlet, noted that “the day after the Islamic Republic of Iran’s first nuclear test is a normal day for us Iranians, however, there will be a new sparkle in the eyes of many.” (See AEI’s Iran Tracker for a related article.) But darn it, that’s not enough for the U.S. intelligence community, which is reportedly hanging tough on its 2007 assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.
In an outstanding piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, State Department non-proliferation adviser, and House intel staffer, slams the intelligence community (IC) for its cynical, political, and laughably off-target take on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. More importantly, he takes on their systemic dishonesty:
Censors also tried to prevent me from discussing my most serious objection to the 2011 Iran NIE: its skewed set of outside reviewers. The U.S. intelligence community regularly employs reviewers who tend to endorse anything they review: former senior intelligence officers, liberal professors and scholars from liberal think tanks. These reviewers tend to share the views of senior intelligence analysts, and they also want to maintain their intelligence contacts and high-level security clearances.
This is one of those Washington truths—everyone knows it, but no one wants to do anything about it. The IC employs the pretense of “outside review” for its material, handpicks reviewers who share the IC’s political biases, and then trumpets its intellectual and political integrity. Every one of us who has held a clearance has had this experience, but thus far, no one has been willing to take on the issue. (Ditto, by the way, for the IC’s habits of doling out its slush fund money to congenial research institutions for conferences bolstering their point of view.)
Time to get the intelligence community back into the business of analyzing intel and out of the business of skewing to secure political outcomes.
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i’m iranian and i know one hundred percent that iran is not producing nuclear bomb. we don’t need any WMDs. the west afraid of iranian breakthrough. you fear that one day iran or any other muslim country may become scientific superpower. allah is great, you cannot hurt us.
Allah doesn’t want you to kill other human. But you are embarrassing the human being.
we don’t want to kill anybody. israel have 200 nuclear warhead, why don’t you protest? are you a muslim?
Of course they are conducting a nuclear weapons program. Whether they have decided to develop a nuclear weapon or stop short is the question. The CIA produce the 2007 NIE when they knew about Qum in 2005 (a clandestine enrichment facility).
Once Bush had got Iranian compliance on Iraq, he was not going to bomb Iran until US forces had left Iraq. The 2007 NIE allowed for political cover. If Iran had keep the US bogged down in Iraq the US would have no other option other than to turn Iran into the stone age.
In fact Iran was that close in early 2007 from being bombed into the stone age it was not funny. It was by luck on the Iranians side, problems on our side that OP Thor’s Hammer did not go ahead. Due to a security breach the operation had to be canceled, (but Iran did not know this) so when Iran was confronted in 2007 and threatened it was the greatest bluff of the 21 century. These plans take months to years to develop so once a window closes it takes time for another plan to be developed.
If Iran knew that there had been a security breach and we had no plans they would not have stopped. Making the call was desperation, I was not scared of the Iranians I was scared of the President. Accident or not he would still expect you to blow your head off.
That was the first call, then the second one was to Tehran.
And it worked as we would still be being bled in Iraq and it is not as simple as people were calling on the President to just leave, the enemy would not let us just leave. So any fall out from striking Iran would have been positive as we would attack the safe haven that was Iran (what were they going to do bog us down in Iraq), once Iran had agreed to limit anti-US operations inside Iraq against US forces, striking Iran would have been counter productive. It was best to secure Iraq, delay the Iranian nuclear program and wait for another window of opportunity.
The objective whether through military means or dialogue was to clear the path in Iraq, it was the objective not how it was achieved.
Once we had got Iranian compliance the President held that over their heads. One of the reasons President Bush’s surge was successful in Iraq and why Obama who used a similar surge in Afghanistan has not had a similar result. But still Iranian involvement in Afghanistan is limited.
Clearly if the IRG had us bogged down in Iran, bleeding us, not allowing us to withdraw, in checkmate, why did they not finish the job, why did they stop. Why?
Would 20,000 troops make a difference under a surge, it didn’t in Afghanistan as in Iraq.
End of the story we won and I still have my head. And Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon yet.
As an Iranian, I read the article and then look at the comment below, and realize how smart the American people are. Garbage news and yellow journalism is rampant, but people of US and Iran don’t have quarrel with each other, they just want to live their lives peacefully. American public is now smarter than ever and they know not to fall for this drivel to provoke another Gulf of Tonkin incident or a Granda invasion etc etc. “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
No sign Iran seeks nuclear arms: new IAEA head
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/03/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-exclusive-idUSL312024420090703
There’s folks who WANT a WWIII because they want a New World Order with fewer people, which a nuclear WWIII will create. To do so, Iran has been chosen as the “enemy”. Sure, they might be run by a nut, but is he more nuts than those who are aiming to create WWIII?
Is there such a thing as “former CIA analyst”? I tend to figure, “once a CIA goon, always a CIA goon” (unless they’re dead). The CIA seems to be run by the same folks that want a WWIII. They seem to froth at the mouth when it comes to wars (or even better, a coup).
I think that all middle east countries are nuts, but can you blame Iran for trying to protect itself when the major propaganda sources (probably run by Murdoch) keep feeding us the same garbage that Iran is the “bad” one of the bunch? (They’re the new “Russia” in that the CIA folks NEED us to have some “bogeyman” to fear and to justify wars.