If you’re going to read just one opinion on the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, read this one by Dennis Ross. Because it should be read in its entirity, I’m not summarizing it, except to cite his final paragraph:
Sadly, it’s now easier for Iran to proceed unimpeded with its nuclear plans. It is far less likely to face the economic (or potentially military) pressures that in 2003 might have persuaded those in the Iranian leadership that the costs of developing their nuclear capabilities were too high. Who in the Iranian elite will argue that or oppose Ahmadinejad’s approach to nukes now? No doubt, that is not what the authors of the NIE sought, but here poor statecraft has trumped our improved efforts at spycraft.
Tom Friedman has just returned from the Bahrain security conference, at which “all the buzz” was about the latest NIE on Iran. Friedman says that it left every Arab and European expert he spoke to “baffled” — “not in its conclusions, but by why those conclusions were framed in a way that is sure to reduce America’s leverage to negotiate with Tehran.”
In his New York Times op-ed, Friedman presents an interesting analogy: (more…)
“A disastrous possible policy - military attack on Iran - has been headed off by a misguided, misinterpreted intelligence report.”
“report or no report, the danger that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons is real, and may even have increased.”
In the Guardian’s “Comment Is Free,” Jonathan Schell provides one of the most insightful perspectives on the NIE that I’ve run across. You’ll profit from reading it in its entirity.
His views are all the more interesting as he is a long-time contributor to the left-wing Nation.
The New York Times reports that, according to senior intelligence and government officials, “American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program.”
Read the complete article here.
The new National Intelligence Estimate has taken out the ground from beneath the various liberals, progressives, and leftists who, with varying degrees of conviction, have been predicting that the United States would initiate military action against Iran before the end of the Bush Administration. There will be no war. Senator Biden’s call for Bush’s impeachment in the event of war with Iran is now off the table. Seymour Hersh will have to find something other than the Pentagon’s plans for attacking Iran to expose. (more…)
