Iraq intel specter casts shadow on Iran
By Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - As the George W Bush administration built the case for war with
Iraq in the early 2000s, press accounts picked up bits of leaked intelligence
that described a weapons of mass destruction threat from then president Saddam
Hussein. But once the United States military entered Iraq, they found nothing.
Now, with neo-conservatives and other Washington hawks campaigning for ever
more aggressive actions against Iran, they must contend with the specter of
Iraq and a popular skepticism that accompanies claims of weapons programs. A
new report from Washington's Atlantic Council aims to sort out the mess by
asking: "How reliable is intelligence on Iran's nuclear program?"
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful medical work and
energy production, but many suspect a clandestine weapons program.
In a few words, US intelligence on Iran's nuclear activities is "not bad", said
Inter Press Service (IPS) contributor and report author Barbara Slavin at an
event. "There is less of a chance of underestimating or over-hyping the Iran
threat."
The report takes a similarly mild tone, declaring intelligence on Iran's
nuclear program is "better and worse than Iraq". The most damaging information
in the run-up to the Iraq war was largely single-source, and thought to be
deeply politicized because the Bush administration was pushing for
confrontation and needed to back it up with a threat.
"Nuclear and intelligence specialists say there have been major improvements in
the way US intelligence is collected and analyzed since 2002," said the council
report, "and that this sort of distortion could not take place now even if the
[President Barack] Obama administration was eager to attack Iran, which does
not appear to be the case."
But shortfalls still exist. Iran's leadership structure that makes the
decisions is opaque. And access by international organizations, such as the
United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), is limited. Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which guarantees its right to a peaceful nuclear program, but withdrew
from a broader inspections regime called the Additional Protocols in 2006.
But in some ways the actual intelligence collection has improved, too:
"[O]bstacles are better compensated for with better technical intelligence,"
says the report, "as well as human intelligence from defectors and others still
in Iran."
Panelists said getting Iran to voluntarily give access to its nuclear sites and
information about its program was crucial.
"Part of the reason for the [international] pressure and the justification for
it is that it's worked in the past," said David Albright, president of the
Institute for Science and International Security. He cited examples such as
South Africa, Brazil and Libya, which had given up their weapons programs
because of pressure.
"Iran," Albright said, "has to be worried about doing something in secret
because they've been exposed so many times."
Indeed, Iran raises such strong suspicious particularly because so many various
aspects of its program have been clandestinely developed and only revealed
either by foreign governments or by Iran because of pressure.
Paul Pillar, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at Georgetown
University, emphasized the importance of being able to return to a full
inspections regime in order to verify that no nuclear materials got diverted to
a secret weapons program.
"The single best source of information about things of this sort - and this is
true about Iraq and Iran - is an international inspections regime," he said.
The intelligence community is not designed to make "up or down judgments on
things like this".
Pillar added, "Things don't become intelligence issues if we're sure about them
in the first place."
Some of Iran's progress, said the report, has been blocked by international
sanctions, particularly those passed by the UN Security Council in June 2010
that restricted the sale of material for nuclear development to Iran.
"Iran used to be able to exploit loopholes, but now they're running into brick
walls," said Slavin at the Council event. The UN sanctions "are difficult to
implement, but they're slowly being implemented".
But the biggest hurdle to knowing what Iran is up to with its nuclear
development remains determining just what Iran's leadership cohort wants the
program to accomplish.
Understanding Iran's program is "at least as much about intentions as about
capabilities", said Pillar. And the US and its allies suffer from a "lack of
access to the inner circles where decisions are made".
Pillar's assessment, with which the council report concurred, is that those
crucial decisions about how far to take the nuclear program "are yet to be
made" by the Iranians.
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