Tomorrow, the New America Foundation is going to host U.S. Iran Policy After the NIE with yours truly, Steve Clemons and Flynt Leverett.
Here is my take, basically what I plan to say tomorrow. And bunch of this has already been said on DANGER ROOM already, by Noah and by Michael Tanji. But don't worry, it's not all rehash. And some points bear repeating.
The Big Picture
This NIE creates a tremendous opportunity for Iran. I’ve long worried that Iran won’t be able to come clean without admitting to a past weapons program and thus handing ammunition to the hawks in Washington. Now that the IC
says the program is shuttered, Iran can basically say, “Yes we did it, but now we shut it down just as your intelligence community said. Come verify that.”
Two Big Developments
Today’s papers are starting to reveal the story behind the two major revelations — the 2003 halt to the program and the 2010-2015 timeframe.
Here’s what I have.
1. “… in fall 2003, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
Dafna Linzer reports in the Washington Post that a crucial bit of information was an intercepted communication by a senior Iranian military official “complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered.”
The intercept — which Linzer notes was one of 1,000 footnotes in a 150 page document — was the final piece in the puzzle, and Linzer reports that the intercepts were briefed to the Bush Administration “beginning in
July.”
So, that timing would be consistent with Mike McConnell’s reference to “new information collected in late spring that caused a reconsideration of some elements of the assessment.”
I had guessed that spring was significant because of developments at Natanz (more on that in a second) or, possibly, the defection of Ali Rez Asgari (an Iranian defense official who was not linked in the press to the nuclear program)...
It seems interesting that the IC confirmed through SIGINT, the sort of thing that Paul and I hypothesized based on bureaucratic reorganization.
2. Iran could use centrifuges to “produce enough fissile material for a weapon
… sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe” based on “significant technical challenges [Iran] sill faces operating them.”
According to USA Today‘s
Richard Willing “photographs taken during the media visit this year…
were reviewed by intelligence analysts who concluded Iran continues to face ‘significant technical problems’ in using the facility to enrich uranium.”
Seriously, they let them take pictures? (I thought I had the only one).
One wonders what visual evidence might have tipped the IC to significant technical challenges beyond what is evident from current operational problems. The physical appearance of the casings or the cold traps?
Environmental conditions in the facility? How the operators were handling the centrifuges?
Anybody remember when Adam Ereli called a similar visit in 2005 a “staged media visit”?
More staged media visits, please.
A special tip of the hat to Greg Miller, at the Los Angeles Times, who had both stories, but in truncated form.
Miller gets the prize for best overall comment, from a “senior U.S.
intelligence official” who “cautioned against concluding that a single piece of information, or ‘Rosetta stone,’ had surfaced.”
