WASHINGTON - The George W Bush
administration's adoption of a policy of
threatening to use military force against Iran
disregarded a series of official intelligence
estimates going back many years that consistently
judged Iran's fear of a US attack to be a major
motivating factor in its pursuit of a nuclear
program, and potentially nuclear weapons.
Two former Central Intelligence Agency
officials who were directly involved in producing
CIA estimates on Iran revealed in separate
interviews that the National
Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Iran have
consistently portrayed its concerns about the
military threat posed by the United States as a
central consideration in Tehran's nuclear policy.
Paul Pillar, who managed the writing of
all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005 as the national
intelligence officer for the Near East and South
Asia, said that all the NIEs on Iran during that
period addressed the Iranian fears of US attack
explicitly and related their desire to be at least
on the early path to possibly developing nuclear
weapons.
"Iranian perceptions of threat,
especially from the United States and Israel, were
not the only factor," Pillar said, "but were in
our judgment part of what drove whatever effort
they were making to build nuclear weapons."
Pillar said the dominant view of the
intelligence community in the past three years has
been that Iran would seek a nuclear-weapons
capability, but analysts have also considered that
a willingness on the part of Washington to
reassure Iran on its security fears would have a
significant effect on Iranian policy.
Pillar said one of the things analysts
have taken into account is Iran's May 2003
proposal to the Bush administration to negotiate
on its nuclear option and its relationship with
Hezbollah and other anti-Israel groups as well as
its own security concerns.
"It was seen as
an indicator of Iran's willingness to engage," he
said.
A second theme in the NIEs,
alongside the emphasis on Iranian fears of US
military intentions, was Iran's aspiration to be
the "dominant regional superpower" in the Persian
Gulf.
However, the estimates suggested
that the Iranian regime would not pursue that
aspiration through means that would jeopardize the
possibility of a relationship with the US.
Ellen Laipson, now president of the Henry
L Stimson Center in Washington, managed three or
four NIEs on Iran as national intelligence officer
for the Near East from 1990 to 1993, and closely
followed others as vice chair of the National
Intelligence Council from 1997 to 2002.
She said the Iranian fear of an attack by
the US had long been "a standard element" in NIEs
on Iran.
Laipson said she was "virtually
certain the estimates linked Iran's threat
perceptions to its nuclear program". She added,
however, that she was not directly involved in
preparation of NIEs that focused exclusively on
Iran's nuclear program, as distinct from overall
assessments of Iranian intentions and
capabilities.
Laipson said the
intelligence analysts had a "fairly consistent
understanding" of Iranian perceptions of threat.
"We could tell they were afraid of the US both
from their behavior and from their public
statements," Laipson recalled. The acuteness of
those Iranian fears of US attack fluctuated over
time, she said, in response to different
developments.
The 1991 Gulf War, in which
US forces destroyed most of the Iraqi army, caused
the Iranians to become much more concerned about
US military intentions, according to some
scholarly analyses of Iranian thinking, because of
the awareness that the same thing could happen to
Iran.
The aggressive stance of the Bush
administration toward Iran again increased Iranian
fears of a US attack. In early 2002, a secret
Pentagon report to Congress on its "Nuclear
Posture Review" named Iran as one of seven
countries against which nuclear weapons might be
used "in the event of surprising military
developments". The report was obtained by defense
analyst William Arkin, who revealed its contents
in the Los Angeles Times on January 26, 2002.
Five days later, Bush referred to Iran in
his State of the Union address as being part of an
"axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea.
"By seeking weapons of mass destruction," he said,
"these regimes pose a grave and growing danger."
Although it did not refer directly to
fears of the US, a declassified letter from the
CIA to Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob
Graham on April 8, 2002, alluded to the linkage
between Iranian perceptions of threats and its
pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The letter
stated, "There appears to be broad consensus among
Iranians that they live in a highly dangerous
region and face serious external threats to their
government, prompting us to assess that Tehran
will pursue missile and WMD [weapons of mass
destruction] technologies indefinitely as critical
means of national security."
The letter
then suggested that the external threats were
focused largely on the US, adding that "persistent
suspicion of US motives will help preserve the
broad consensus among Iran's political elite and
public for the pursuit of missile and WMD
technologies as a matter of critical national
security".
After the US invasion of Iraq
in 2003, a spokesman for the Iranian government
stated that, in a "unipolar world", Iran had to
have policy that would avoid war with the US.
That preoccupation with averting a US
attack cut both ways: it forced the Iranian
leaders to seek a political-diplomatic
accommodation with the US, as illustrated by its
cooperation with the US in Afghanistan after the
events of September 11, 2001, and its offer of
broad negotiations on all major issues between the
two countries in 2003. But when the US failed to
respond to those efforts, it also strengthened the
argument for pressing ahead with a nuclear
program.
Gareth Porter is a
historian and national-security policy analyst.
His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published last June.
