(H/T – LGF)
Or so says the unclassified version of a fresh National Intelligence Estimate. I’m certain the Left half of the blogosphere, like the media already has, is seizing upon the opening phrase of the ‘Key Judgements’ section – “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons
program;…”. Allow me to point out a couple of key equivocations.
The first is the footnote to that phrase – “For the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” Given that the particular method of “declared civil work” selected by the Iranians is at the least approximating one of the popular methods used to create weapons-grade uranium rather than simply the much-less-militarily-useful reactor-grade uranium, I have to strongly question the claim that the program has been completely stopped.
The second is the phrase immediately following – “…we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.” That is an understatement. Judging by what the Iranians have claimed about that “declared civil work” noted above, Iran has transitioned the semi-open portion of its nuclear program to a “turn-key” nuclear weapons program, requiring upon full implementation simply a directive to assemble nuclear weapons.
Interestingly, the NIE notes that the Iranians had spent “considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons.” I don’t exactly remember hearing too much about the Iranian nuclear weapon program until after the fall of 2003. Related to that time frame, I also remember another WMD program not in a country that started with an “I” that very-publicly stopped, rather than the covert “stop” the Iranian program supposedly had, right about that 2003 timeframe, and that stoppage was directly attributed to a unique certain event that happened in 2003.
This part is chilling; “We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely while it weighs its options, or whether it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart the program.” Given that a possible American pincers movement from Iraq and Afghanistan undoubtedly weighed in on the “cost-benefit approach” the NIE claims the Iranians are using, given the kick-the-can-down-the-road assessment of 2010-2015 for sufficient HEU uranium, and given the claim that Iran was spending “considerable effort” on its nuclear program through the 1990s, I’ll guess that the election of a Democrat or Ron Paul would be all the criteria Iran would need to resume a full “Manhattan Project” program.
The laugh of the day, however, comes from point F, which says that the Iranians might use covert facilities, had in fact used covert facilities in the past, and stopped using covert facilities in 2003. Wasn’t that the assessment of North Korea’s nuclear program between 1994 and 2002, which was completely invalidated by the discovery of said covert facilties and their use between 1994 and 2002?
Revisions/extensions (4:48 pm 12/3/2007) – There’s a lot more linkage to the Right half’s react over at Hot Air.
