Who is willing to cross the consensus of all 16 American intelligence agencies that Iran suspended their nuclear weapons program in 2003? Who is willing to assert that their own personal opinion is superior to the collective wisdom contained in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)?
It turns out they are exactly the same people that passionately supported the 2002 NIE that was wrong on almost every particular. And, if you look at the culprits something fairly obvious emerges.
“If this N.I.E. is true, the evidence would have to be awfully good,” he continued in another version of the argument, posted to the right-leaning National Review’s website. “And evidence of that quality has been in famously short supply.”
“While I was in the administration, I saw intelligence march up the hill and down the hill in short periods of time with no reason for them to change their mind,” said John R. Bolton, Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations. “I’ve never based my view on this week’s intelligence.”
Michael Goldfarb of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard.
Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community (“IC”) in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye–no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn’t getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.
From Israel:
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran was continuing in its efforts to produce a nuclear bomb despite the report. According to the minister, Iran had indeed stopped its program four years ago but has since renewed it…
…Asked if the new U.S. assessment reduced chances that the U.S. will launch a military strike on Iran, Barak said that was possible.
However, he said, “We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.”
Mordechai Kedar, who served in Israel’s military intelligence for 25 years and is a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israel’s intelligence community disagrees with the latest estimate.
“This is a matter of interpretation of data. I do believe that the U.S. and Israel share the same data, but the dispute is about interpreting the data. … Only a blind man cannot see their efforts to put a hand on a nuclear weapon. They are threatening the world.”
Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he “doesn’t buy” the National Intelligence Estimate findings that Iran had stopped making a nuclear weapon. He said Israel should “not take any risks” and keep up its campaign against Tehran.
In other words, a full two years after Iran supposedly called a halt to its nuclear program, the intelligence community was still as sure as it ever is about anything that Iran was determined to build a nuclear arsenal. Why then should we believe it when it now tells us, and with the same “high confidence,” that Iran had already called a halt to its nuclear-weapons program in 2003?…
…But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.
New York Sun editorial:
t’s advancing a line that could be described with the word astounding if it didn’t come from the same intelligence bureaucrats that so famously failed to foresee the attacks of September 11, 2001.
One doesn’t have to be privy to our country’s secret sources to know that this last statement strains credulity. Iran has been enriching uranium, or nuclear fuel, for nearly two years despite two Security Council resolutions urging them to suspend. To believe the Mullahs have halted their nuclear weapons program, one has to believe that all of those spinning centrifuges in Natanz are to fuel power plants in a country that is the world’s third leading exporter of petroleum and natural gas.
I could go on.
What is obvious in these reactions is that each of them has a very strong relationship to Israel. And I don’t begrudge Israel their right to be concerned about Iran and any potential nuclear program they might have now or might develop in the future. But Israel’s allies in the U.S. government and in the press, have been shameless in promoting lies about Iran. The Intelligence Community finally got sick of it and pushed back.
…in a statement on Monday, Donald M. Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that since the new estimate was at odds with the 2005 assessment — and thus at odds with public statements by top officials about Iran — “we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”
Going unspoken is the fact that the 2005 NIE was politicized and deliberately inaccurate, just as the 2002 NIE was that was wrong in almost every particular. Donald M. Kerr is saying that the NIE was declassified because public officials were making inaccurate claims based on the 2005 NIE. Never mind that many of those the public officials, like the president and vice-president, had access to newer intelligence. The contours of our foreign policy can be seen clearly in the reaction to the 2007 NIE. Without any doubt, Israel has too much influence over our foreign policy, desperately wants us to fight a war for them with Iran (and Syria), and is willing to disregard the truth anytime it doesn’t further their agenda.
No politician can say this outloud, so I’m saying it. Because it is true. And, in my honest opinion, the American public’s patience for this behavior is limited. It will wind up doing two things. It will weaken domestic support for strong U.S.-Israel relations, and it will increase dramatically anti-Semitic feelings…as people are increasingly drawn to simplistic answers to the nation’s problems.
Those that are concerned for Israel should be much more alarmed by the reaction of Israel’s advocates to this NIE than they are about the possibility that the NIE might be wrong.
