The Morning Brief - WSJ.com

Exposing What We
Don't Know About Iran

(in other words figuring out how to discredit the report)

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The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran casts doubt on the hawkish warnings about Tehran's nuclear ambitions but paints such a Rorschach-like picture of the situation that it's unlikely to quiet debate.

The NIE process, it must first be noted, is now more prone to ambiguity thanks to the legislative and political overhauls of American spy work in the wake of 9/11 and the Bush administration's use of WMD estimates to take the country into Iraq. Changes in the past 18 months mean NIEs come with definitions and notes on the scope of such phrases as "we judge, we assess, and we estimate -- and probabilistic terms such as probably and likely," as well as a breakdown of the differences among high confidence, moderate confidence and low confidence. What this NIE aimed to do was reexamine a 2005 NIE that accused Iran of working toward creation of a nuclear armament and assessing the Iranian government's relatively current intentions and capabilities -- starting without an assumption of guilt, it insists.

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," the U.S. intelligence community (or IC) concludes. "We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran's announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work." The IC has "high confidence" the halt in the Iranian military's nuclear-weapons work lasted several years. But because of intelligence gaps there is only moderate confidence this halt represents a halt to Iran's entire nuclear-weapons program. "We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons," the NIE says. Still, the halt suggests Iran is less determined to get one "than we have been judging since 2005."

The Morning Brief - WSJ.com