Spies show Bush a way forward on
Iran By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Despite the White House spin
that the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
supports its policy of increasing pressure on
Iran, the estimate not only directly contradicts
the George W Bush administration's line on Iranian
intentions regarding nuclear weapons but points to
a link between Tehran's 2003 decisions to halt
research on weaponization and to negotiate with
European foreign ministers on both nuclear and
Iranian security concerns.
By using
unusually strong and precise language in
characterizing
its
pivotal judgment that Iran ended work relating to
nuclear weapons four years earlier, the estimate
deals a serious blow to the administration's claim
that Iran is determined to acquire nuclear
weapons. The key judgment released on Monday said:
"We assess with high confidence that in fall 2003,
Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program [and]
that the halt lasted at least several years."
The intelligence community also said for
the first time in the new NIE: "We do not know
whether it currently intends to develop nuclear
weapons."
That judgment confirms what
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director
general Mohamed ElBaradei and other close
observers of the Iranian nuclear program have been
saying since 2004: Iran is not interested in
nuclear weapons but in the deterrent value
inherent in the knowledge of mastering the nuclear
fuel cycle.
However, Bush has latched onto
this "knowledge" aspect in an attempt to lower the
bar on Iran: "Iran was dangerous, Iran is
dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have
the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,"
he said at a press conference following the
release of the NIE.
The Washington Post
revealed on Tuesday that the White House had been
briefed on the new evidence of the Iranian
abandonment of weaponization in 2003 as early as
July, and that White House officials had sharply
challenged that evidence. According to a story by
Dafna Linzer and Joby Warrick, "several of the
president's top advisers" had argued that
electronic intercepts of Iranian military
officers, which were reportedly a key element of
the new evidence, were part of a "clever Iranian
deception campaign".
The White House
intervention had forced the intelligence analysts
to go through months of defending their
interpretation of the new data, according to
Linzer and Warrick.
Inter Press Service
reported in November that the NIE had been
originally completed in the autumn of 2006 but
that it had been rewritten three times, reflecting
pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney. The new
revelations about White House political
intervention appear to represent a far more
ambitious effort to alter the conclusions of the
NIE than previously reported.
The new
intelligence assessment increases the pressure on
the Bush administration's effort to use the threat
of possible military action against Iran and its
diplomatic stance of insisting that Iran must
agree to carry out the United Nations Security
Council's demands for an end to its enrichment
program before any negotiations can take place.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
acknowledged that many people would now be saying
"the problem is less bad than we thought". But in
an effort to limit the damage to its Iran policy
from the estimate, Hadley argued on Monday that it
"suggests that the president has the right
strategy: intensified international pressure along
with a willingness to negotiate a solution ..."
The NIE does refer to the role of
"international pressures" in halting Iran's
program, but contrary to Hadley's argument, it
suggests that the decision to halt weaponization
was not prompted by threats and pressure. The key
finding of the estimate also indicates that the
intelligence community believes Iran is more
likely to forego the nuclear weapons option if the
United States deals with its security and
political interests than if it relies on threats
and sanctions.
The estimate concludes that
the halt in the weapons program was ordered "in
response to increasing international scrutiny and
pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's
previously undeclared nuclear work". That is a
reference to the situation facing the Iranian
leadership in 2003, when its acquisition of
nuclear technology from Pakistani Abdul Qadeer
Khan's network had already been exposed but there
was no threat of either military action or
economic sanctions against Iran over the nuclear
issue.
A major feature of the diplomatic
situation in the autumn of 2003 was the
willingness of Britain, France and Germany to
negotiate an agreement with Iran on a wider range
of security issues, based on voluntary Iranian
suspension of uranium enrichment.
A speech
by Hassan Rowhani, the moderate conservative
secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security
Council, in the autumn of 2004 revealed that there
had been sharp "differences of opinion" among
Iranian leaders on the issue in autumn 2003.
Although the Rowhani speech did not refer
to any weapons-related work, it did throw light on
the basic political and strategic considerations
being weighed by the Iranian national security
elite in 2003.
Some conservatives were
condemning the idea of cooperating with the IAEA
and accepting the Additional Protocol of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would
require much more intensive inspection of all
nuclear sites, as "an act of treason", according
to Rowhani.
They were also strongly
opposed to trying to reach agreement with Britain,
France and Germany on a deal under which
enrichment would be foregone in return for
concessions to Iran on security issues.
The moderates, however, were ready to open
up about their nuclear program to the IAEA and
negotiating with the Europeans. They apparently
believed that course required dropping whatever
weapons-related research was underway.
Rowhani emphasized that continued secrecy
about the nuclear program had become impossible,
because the Libyans had told the US everything
about what he called the "middleman" - apparently
a representative of the Khan network - from which
both Libya and Iran had acquired nuclear
technology.
The signal event of that
period was the agreement in Tehran on October 21,
2003, between the foreign ministers of Iran and
the three European states. In the agreement, Iran
renounced nuclear weapons, pledged to sign and
begin ratification of the Additional Protocol and
"voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and
reprocessing activities as defined by the IAEA".
The three European foreign ministers
pledged, in turn, to "cooperate with Iran to
promote security and stability in the region,
including the establishment of a zone free from
weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East in
accordance with the objectives of the United
Nations".
The Bush administration had
opposed the initiative of the European three in
offering a political agreement with Iran that
would offer security and other concessions as part
of a broader deal. The administration wanted to
bring Iran quickly before the United Nations
Security Council so that it would be subject to
international sanctions.
Britain, France
and Germany reached an agreement with Iran in
mid-November 2004 under which Iran pledged to
"provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear
program is exclusively for peaceful purposes" and
the EU three promised "firm guarantees on nuclear,
technological and economic cooperation and firm
commitments on security issues".
The
European three then began to backtrack from that
agreement under pressure from Washington. But the
new evidence that Iran made the decision to drop
all weapons-related research at that time appears
to confirm the correctness of the original
European negotiating approach.
Paul
Pillar, a former national intelligence officer for
the Middle East who managed the 2005 NIE on the
Iranian nuclear program and other NIEs on Iran,
told Inter Press Service he considers it
"plausible" that the decision to halt
weapons-related work was part of a broader change
in strategy that included a decision to enter into
negotiations that promised security benefits in
return for demonstrating restraint on enrichment.
Gareth Porter is an
investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. His
latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of
Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in June 2005.
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