Last December, our efforts to prevent a nuclear Iran suffered an enormous setback. That's when our intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate which dramatically announced that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. It was hard enough securing additional economic sanctions on Iran back when everyone agreed about its nuclear ambitions. The NIE has made this job inestimably more difficult.
The NIE was terribly misleading. Those who bothered to read the fine print quickly discovered that the only thing Iran had "halted" was its "weaponization" program -- the actual design and construction of an atom bomb. But Iran never abandoned its uranium enrichment program to make the fuel for such a weapon. Enriching enough uranium for an atom bomb is a process that takes many years. Weaponizing that uranium takes only a few months. It was clear to most serious observers that the only thing Iran had "halted" was making the icing for a rapidly rising cake.
Mike McConnell, our director of National intelligence, has finally acknowledged this horrible error. To his discredit, however, he did so only reluctantly, and partially, in response to some excellent questions from Indiana's Senator Evan Bayh. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, McConnell stated that he now regrets the wording of the NIE. If he had it to do over again, McConnell said, he would not leave the impression that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program. Instead, he would make it clear that Iran only halted the "least significant part" of that program, while they continue to work on all of the other parts.
Lovely. Good to know. However, sir, your NIE's original wording was on the front pages of every newspaper in the world. Your qualified correction was buried on page 12, if mentioned at all. Where do we go to get our sense of urgency back?
And the hits keep coming. Last week also brought some news from Iran. It seems that Iran has begun to deploy a new generation of advanced centrifuges to speed up the uranium enrichment process. The new centrifuges, known as IR-2s, can enrich uranium at over twice the speed of Iran's current generation of centrifuges. Those estimates that Iran will have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon within a year or two may be overstating the length of the process.
As the Guardian's Elana Schor observed, "halted" must be the new "accelerated."
Iran, of course, does not need enriched uranium for any purpose other than for a nuclear weapon. It is true that this oil-rich nation built a nuclear reactor which it claims is for civilian power only. However all of the uranium needed for to fuel this reactor is being supplied by Russia.
Mr. McConnell's tepid regrets won't undo the damage done by the NIE. But they can remind us that we were right not to be fooled by the NIE. And they should spur us to work harder than ever to overcome the complacency and apathy the NIE has produced.
For more of Brog's Blog, please visit www.cufi.org
Previous entries:
Full steam ahead
A setback on Iran
Annapolis Arrives
A Year to go?
No picnics in Gaza
Constant Vigilance
The fate of the Sunday People
