A mere two days after the national intelligence community sprang a revised opinion of Iranian nuclear intent upon an amazed world, it’s clear that the document itself – the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE – has become a kind of magic mirror: Everyone sees what they want to see in it.
For those lost souls doomed to breathe the fetid airs of the left wing fever swamps, it has become one more pea in the mattress of their political discontent. Already we are hearing the usual subjects ask the same tedious questions about “what the president knew, and when he knew it” – a kind of tantric charm muttered by those who still dare to dream that impeachment for one reason or another (any reason will do) can still ameliorate the emotionally infantilizing psychic damage of Florida in 2000.
Caught by surprise, the tribunes of the people took a complex, layered and frankly ambiguous document and reduced it to an orotund pronouncement: One More Blow for the President’s Foreign Policy. This is comfortable ground for them no doubt, but the shorthand ignores these troubling facts: 1) Uranium enrichment cascades continue to spin, and 2) so does work on ever more capable, long range ballistic missiles. Of the third and final link in the nuclear weapons development chain, only the scientific and technological work to marry fissile material to a delivery system has been placed on hold. This is a policy decision that could as easily be reversed (if it hasn’t been already) as it was originally entered into. The solons of the legacy media apparently made the deductive if illogical leap that the president’s policy with respect to Iran was war for its own sake rather than a multi-faceted, international and even nuanced (!) policy designed to prevent that which now seems to have been forestalled – Iranian nukes.
On the far right, people who evidently mistook the tool bench for the product apparently fail to understand that the vise has done the job and that the hammer won’t be necessary. Too many of them now grumpily mutter about cooked books and intelligence agents improperly injecting themselves into the policy arena. But you can’t have it both ways – you can’t insist on the one hand that intelligence was not politicized to lead us into war in Iraq on the one hand but that it was to prevent war in Iran on the other. Maintaining that it does will only lend support to those who earnestly deduce that there isn’t any relationship between policy goals and methods if the answer must always be war, no matter the question.
For the “faster please” set, military strikes would serve the cause of regime change as much as nuclear security. But while we could easily take the regime apart given time, we’d be hard pressed to put anything else in its place. The nation breaking capacity of our Air Force and Navy may lie mostly idle, but the nation building machinery of our ground forces are pretty much running at full capacity.
Put another way, what’s the point of risking air strikes that might or might not take the Iranian weapons machinery off-line but would almost certainly align an otherwise growingly disaffected populace behind the terror masters if there isn’t any plausible way to replace them? And all this before well-placed and highly motivated Iranian intelligence agents and proxies get green-lighted to play old harry, both with our regional allies and here at home.
Of course it doesn’t help much that a lame duck and besieged administration, eager to continue efforts towards an international containment policy, greeted the news clumsily. But such are the times we live in that even the president’s people, accustomed through long usage by now to seeing the world through the lenses of their opponents’ implacable hostility – a world view in which things aren’t measured by their own instrinsic worth, but measured against what “helps” or “hurts” Bush – have failed to recognize that this is great good news, if true. For all of us.
It’s good news because it means that the mullah’s aren’t some kind of messianic suicide cult, something that wasn’t entirely clear before. It’s good news because it now appears that they weigh and balance national interest in a rational way and that they are susceptible to international pressure. Meaning of course, that they might also be susceptible to positive reinforcement.
Might be we could talk.
Which means we have at least a chance to settle this like reasonable peoples. That we might not have to choose between catastrophe and holocaust, neither for ourselves, nor the Iranians. That there can, perhaps, be peace.
Great good news.
If, of course, the intel is correct… Pardon me though if I don’ t place a lot of trust in our CIA or Ahmadinejad’s reasonableness. In the famous words of Ronald Regan… trust, but verify.
Jim C
Faster, funnier, please.
b2
One wonders how our friends in Tel Aviv look upon this NIE document, surely they have one of their own and probably a lot more accurate.
I honestly don’t know what to think about the NIE on Iran. But I keep coming back to this: if the intelligence was wrong about 9-11 and wrong about Iraq, why is it now right about Iran? Especially when it suddenly contradicts everything we thought we knew and exists in light of the diplomatic games Ahmadinejad plays.
Lex, does the report (I’ve only had time to glance over it, finals and all), specify if just miniaturizing bomb development has been halted, or is it all bomb research?
As much as these talking heads on TV blather on, they forget that a few college students of the engineering and physics variety could come up with a gun-type device that could fit in a 40′ trailer.
Their still doing the two hard parts. I don’t understand how this is good news, especially those diplomatic types.
“ameliorate the emotionally infantilizing psychic damage of Florida in 2000.” Oh, I like that!
…And, “Magic Mirror”? Try the inscription around the top of “The Mirror of Erised” in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. “I show not your face but your heart’s desire”. (You gotta hold it up to a mirror to read it doncha know).
Thanks, Lex!
Lex,
Iam sorry to say that I believe that war with iran is inevitable. Unless, of course, a mag 9 earthquake levels the place.
For 25 centuries the Persians have been the jock itch if the middle east. They are predictable, sadly, and it will not end until they are violently and finally destroyed as a nation, a people, and become a sickening footnote to history.
I weep for the people of Iran, for there are many who would return to a more open, western, society. However, the rot is too deep, the pestilence of radical Islam to pervasice, to be healed by anything other than a societal version of chemotherapy.
It hurts me, it truly hurts me to admit it, but some things cannot be saved. Iran must be destroyed or, like the cancer it is, it will eventually metastasize and detroy everything around it.
Better that Iran die and the rest of the middle east survives, than all go down in a comflagration of fire and destruction.
Rome eventually dalt with Carthage and it would be best if we dealt with iran in a similar manner. Persia delenda est.
Respects,
Not certain I agree, Tim. You assessment of the Persians jibes with my own, yet war may not be the ultimate answer. Some cancers enter remission when they can no longer grow. A thriving economic middle-east coupled with an Iraq starved of trade may indeed kill the infestation. Remember, the Persians are historically traders and merchants, with only a small percentage devoted to Islamic radicalism. It’s difficult to say you have the answer when all around you people are better off.
One becomes rather irrelevant in that scenario.
Sadly, once the oil is gone, or unneeded, the middle east will become no more worthy of consideration than, say, Chad. Insofar as daily life on the rest of the planet is concerned, it will become immaterial. This is, indeed, the last chance that region will have to be relevant to human events. One might expect they’ve also drawn this conclusion.
– Max
The new and current National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says: Oh, Iran?, no big deals, nothing to see here.”
Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of Analysis for the CIA and main author of the new and current NIE, testified to the completely opposite conclusion on July 11th, 2007, that Iran continued to pursue nuclear weapons.
“Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States’ concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran’s neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons–despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.”
Given that the same team has produced both conclusions, they were either accurate and truthful then, or now, but not both. Prudence dictates to weigh and determine what estimate protects U.S. interests better.
This is simply a spanked intelligence arm of our government trying to influence the outcome of State policy and possibly the pending elections. Just like when they determinedValerie Plame affair didnt warrant investigation by anyone other than the media. Just like when they leaked information about our operations in theater. The incompetent louts simply want someone else to blame.
Cap’n,
There are copious quantities of words either casting the CIA as a rogue Empire Builder or Clueless Stumblebum. This document, like anything else coming from the Administration, will be picked apart, reviewed through any number of different colored spectacles and conclusions drawn to satisfy the target audience.
That said, I heartily concur that Iran’s mullahs and their Presidential mouthpiece cannot be believed. We, as a nation, would do well, as Jim C. says, ‘Trust ,but verify’. We should also follow Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick’.
Sadly, our intel has been wrong about so many things, I have no confidence in this. First, it’s an estimate. Second, it’s based on incomplete information. This has all been hashed out in other places. Third, go back and read some of the old NIE reports. One that I remember indicated that Anastasio Somoza hada firm grip on things. This was written a week before he lost power. Another one gave short shrift to Castro. I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought that the Ayatollah Khomeni was just a flash in the pan.
Bottom line:
These people have been wrong so many times about so many things, and so recently (Berlin wall, collapse of Russia, India/Pakistan, Iraq invading Kuwait, etc.). That’s just a short list. I’m not an optimist.