Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Today's big news item is obviously the release of the National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003. The Washington Post argues the NIE's a blow to the Bush administration:

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

Iran had been shaping up as perhaps the dominant foreign policy issue of Bush's remaining year in office and of the presidential campaign to succeed him. Now leaders at home and abroad will have to rethink what they thought they knew about Tehran's intentions and capabilities.

"It's a little head-spinning," said Daniel Benjamin, an official on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "Everybody's going to be trying to scratch their heads and figure out what comes next."

Critics seized on the new National Intelligence Estimate to lambaste what Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards called "George Bush and Dick Cheney's rush to war with Iran." Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), echoing other Democrats, called for "a diplomatic surge" to resolve the dispute with Tehran. Jon Wolfsthal, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, termed the revelation "a blockbuster development" that "requires a wholesale reevaluation of U.S. policy."

But the White House said the report vindicated its concerns because it concluded that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until halting it in 2003 and it showed that U.S.-led diplomatic pressure had succeeded in forcing Tehran's hand. "On balance, the estimate is good news," said national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. "On the one hand, it confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it tells us that we have made some progress in trying to ensure that that does not happen."

Hadley disagreed that the report showed that past administration statements have been wrong, noting that collecting intelligence on a "hard target" such as Iran is notoriously difficult. "Welcome to the real world," he said.

The left-wing blogosphere is having a field day with the NIE report (see Memeorandum). (Glenn Greenwald's got a rabidly (radical) anti-Bush post on the affair, "Our Serious Foreign Policy Geniuses Strike Again.")

I'm going to take a closer look at the full report, but I find the conclusions odd, based on my own reading of journalistic and scholarly sources on Tehran's march to weapons capability.

Just Sunday, Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins - authors of The Nuclear Jihadist - published a penetrating essay warning of the threat from Iran's development program:

In recent weeks, international attention has been focused on the political crisis in Pakistan and whether the military there could lose control of the nukes that Khan helped develop -- estimated at between 50 and 120 devices -- if the political situation were to spiral out of control or if radical Islamists were to take over.

But we believe the bigger threat today comes from Iran, where the country's leaders are forging defiantly ahead toward the bomb -- even as the Bush administration seems equally relentless in its determination to stop them. This is a recipe for a global confrontation that could make the Iraq war seem tame by comparison, and it has gotten to this point thanks to A.Q. Khan.

The most immediate threat is that Iran's scientists will soon complete their mastery of the uranium enrichment cycle, enabling them to produce fissile material that could fuel a civilian reactor (as they claim is their intention) or, in higher concentration, power a bomb. A Nov. 15 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that 3,000 centrifuges are online at Iran's Natanz underground enrichment plant, and that Iran is in the final stages before the production of enriched uranium. While IAEA officials suggest privately that technical hurdles remain, the fact is that Iran is on the verge of enriching uranium on an industrial scale....

Even more troubling, and less noticed by the media, was Iran's admission to the IAEA in November that it had made substantial progress in testing an advanced type of centrifuge, known as the P-2. Iran's enrichment plant now uses P-1 centrifuges, but investigators have learned that the P-2, like its predecessor, the P-1, came to Iran directly from Khan. This machine would cut in half the time it takes to enrich uranium, moving up a showdown with the United States and its allies. Estimates on when Iran might be capable of developing a nuclear weapon have ranged from two to 10 years.

Iran, of course, did not simply volunteer to the IAEA that it was working on the P-2; it's never quite that simple. The IAEA's dealings with Tehran are replete with examples, ever since Iran's secret nuclear program was exposed by an exile group in 2002, of officials denying the existence of one program after another, only to acknowledge them when confronted by evidence to the contrary. The IAEA has credited Iran with cooperating on some key issues, but viewed in context, the repeated evasions undermine Iran's credibility on virtually everything it has said about nuclear issues, including whether there is a military side to its program....

The existence of the P-2 designs troubled... the IAEA, and they pressed the Iranians for months over whether they had translated them into actual machines. Eventually Iran conceded that work had been done on the P-2 by a private contractor, but insisted that the project had been abandoned. U.S. intelligence and skeptics at the IAEA doubted the claim, speculating instead that the P-2 could be the nucleus of a parallel enrichment project still hidden from the IAEA.

Fast forward to April 2006. That's when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged to the media that Iranian scientists were indeed working on the P-2, which he boasted would quadruple Iran's enrichment capability. The IAEA had to wait until Nov. 7, 2007, for formal acknowledgment from Iran of the work. By then, Iran was running mechanical tests on the P-2s, a step short of introducing uranium hexafluoride -- the final stage before the production of enriched uranium.

The story of the P-2s is a case study in how Iran has managed to make substantial gains in enrichment technology despite international scrutiny and pressure.

Some outstanding political science research also has offered credible warnings on the consequence of Iranian nuclear capability. Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh, in their provocative article, "Iran’s Nuclear Challenge," argued that while the timing was at issue, Iran's procurement of nuclear weapons would be a dangerous development:

Once Iran completes the necessary infrastructure, from mining to enriching uranium at the suitable weapons-grade level, and masters the engineering skill required to assemble a bomb, it could cross the threshold in a short period of time. All this would depend on the scope and scale of the program and the level of national resources committed to this task. Iran today does have an accelerated program, but not a crash program similar to Pakistan’s in the early 1970s, when the entirety of national energies was mobilized behind the task of constructing a nuclear device. In this context, Iran’s persistent determination to complete the fuel cycle—which it has a right to do under the NPT—is ominous, because doing so would bring the country close to a weapons capability.

There's certain to be further debate on Iran's program, especially since the political origins of the NIE's most recent findings are suspect. Norman Podhoretz, over at Commentary, notes his deep suspicions:

These findings are startling, not least because in key respects they represent a 180-degree turn from the conclusions of the last NIE on Iran’s nuclear program. For that one, issued in May 2005, assessed “with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons” and to press on “despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

In other words, a full two years after Iran supposedly called a halt to its nuclear program, the intelligence community was still as sure as it ever is about anything that Iran was determined to build a nuclear arsenal. Why then should we believe it when it now tells us, and with the same “high confidence,” that Iran had already called a halt to its nuclear-weapons program in 2003? Similarly with the intelligence community’s reversal on the effectiveness of international pressure. In 2005, the NIE was highly confident that international pressure had not lessened Iran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons, and yet now, in 2007, the intelligence community is just as confident that international pressure had already done the trick by 2003.

It is worth remembering that in 2002, one of the conclusions offered by the NIE, also with “high confidence,” was that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.” And another conclusion, offered with high confidence too, was that “Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.”

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

If this is what lies behind the release of the new NIE, its authors can take satisfaction in the response it has elicited from the White House. Quoth Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser: “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically—without the use of force—as the administration has been trying to do.”

I should add that I offer these assessments and judgments with no more than “moderate confidence.”

One of America's top Middle East experts, Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, released an analysis of UN and IAEA reporting on Iran last week. Here's the conclusion from the synopsis:

The evidence presented provides strong indications that Iran is pursuing a
nuclear weapons program. Specifically, Iran is known to have made significant
efforts in all of the following areas, most of which have been tracked by the
IAEA for some time:

* Beryllium (neutron reflector)
* Polonium (neutron initiator)
* Plutonium separation
* Uranium enrichment
* Machining of Uranium hemispheres
* Re-entry vehicle design
* Acquisition of North Korean (Chinese) weapons design? AQ Khan network transfers
* High explosive lenses

The attached briefing shows that the IAEA has traced a pattern of
Iranian efforts that fit a coherent and consistent nuclear weapons program that
is difficult to explain in any other way, but no certainties are involved.
Moreover, major uncertainties exist in virtually every aspect of any effort to
characterize what kind of program Iran may be intending to create, when it will
have a significant stock of weapons, and how it intends to deploy and exploit
such a capability.

At the same time, there is wide range of possible
Iranian activities that the IAEA may never be able to fully address, even if
Iran does adopt the full range of NPT protocols...

The CSIS report is hefty (at 55 pages), but it notes that of 2006, Iran stopped reporting information to the IAEA under international monitoring and transparency protocols. Even Mohammed ElBaradei recognized that Iran's evasion and recalcitrance created a situation of crisis proportions.

See also Democracy Arsenal (not a neoconservative outfit in the least), which argues:

You don't want to believe the Bush Administration . . . I'm right there with you. But concern about Iran's nuclear program was not exclusively American; it was shared by every member of the Security Council and Germany.

In the end, I doubt the NIE report will provide any closure to the issue. There might be administration retreat from the march to war, but those at odds with the report will question the impartiality of the intelligence community. Peaceniks opposed to the robust exercise of American military power will rejoice that their dire warnings have beeen vindicated (and they'll continue to rail against the "neocons" and their black helicopters).

The ultimate winner is, of course, Iran, which can call for reprisals against the West as its leadership continues to work for its ultimate goal of establishing regional hegemony in the Middle East.

Containing Iran?

The dust has yet to clear from this week's NIE bombshell, so one might think we'd avoid another abrupt change in foreign policy thinking on Iran.

Not so lucky, I guess, considering the publication of Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh's new piece over at Foreign Affairs, "The Costs of Containing Iran." The authors argue that the Bush administration's Iranian containment policy is destined to failure: Stuck in a Cold War-era mindset, the perspective's woefully inadequate considering the current correlation of forces in the Middle East:

Taking a page out of its early Cold War playbook, Washington hopes to check and possibly reduce Tehran's growing influence much as it foiled the Soviet Union's expansionist designs: by projecting its own power while putting direct pressure on its enemy and building a broad-based alliance against it. Washington has been building up the U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and using harsh rhetoric, raising the specter of war. At the same time, it funds a $75 million democracy-promotion program supporting regime change in Tehran. In recent months, Washington has rallied support for a series of United Nations resolutions against Iran's nuclear program and successfully pushed through tough informal financial sanctions that have all but cut Iran out of international financial markets. It has officially designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and the IRG's elite al Quds Army as a supporter of terrorism, allowing the Treasury Department to target the groups' assets and the U.S. military to harass and apprehend their personnel in Iraq. Washington is also working to garner support from what it now views as moderate governments in the Middle East -- mostly authoritarian Arab regimes it once blamed for the region's myriad problems.

Washington's goal is to eliminate Iran's influence in the Arab world by rolling back Tehran's gains to date and denying it the support of allies -- in effect drawing a line from Lebanon to Oman to separate Iran from its Arab neighbors. The Bush administration has rallied support among Arab governments to oppose Iranian policies in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. It is trying to buttress the military capability of Persian Gulf states by providing a $20 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. According to Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, one of the arms sales' primary objectives is "to enable these countries to strengthen their defenses and therefore to provide a deterrence against Iranian expansion and Iranian aggression in the future." And through a series of regional conclaves and conferences, the Bush administration hopes to rejuvenate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process partly in the hope of refocusing the energies of the region's governments on the threat posed by Iran.

Containing Iran is not a novel idea, of course, but the benefits Washington expects from it are new. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have devised various policies, doctrines, and schemes to temper the rash theocracy. For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East's various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran's influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran's power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East's focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.

But there is a problem: Washington's containment strategy is unsound, it cannot be implemented effectively, and it will probably make matters worse. The ingredients needed for a successful containment effort simply do not exist. Under these circumstances, Washington's insistence that Arab states array against Iran could further destabilize an already volatile region.

What's so ineffective? Why will containment of Iran make things worse in the Middle East?

For one thing, Nasr and Takeyh argue that Iran in no way presents a threat on the same level as the old Soviet Union. Particularly, the authors suggest that Iran is not a revisionist power, and is not "seeking to create disorder in order to fulfill some scriptural promise, nor is it an expansionist power with unquenchable ambitions."

I find this a strange claim, particularly coming from Nasr, who has written that the administration's Iraq policy left a strategic power vacuum inside the Middle East, which Tehran - as the leader of a regional Shiite resurgence - was all too eager to fill.

Not to be outdone, Peter Galbraith, writing in the New York Review of Books, argued that America's difficulties in Iraq positioned Iran toward a situation of dominance previously unheard of:

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran's strategic victory is the most far-reaching. In establishing the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire in 1639, the Treaty of Qasr-i-Shirin demarcated the boundary between Sunni-ruled lands and Shiite-ruled lands. For eight years of brutal warfare in the 1980s, Iran tried to breach that line but could not. (At the time, the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein precisely because it feared the strategic consequences of an Iraq dominated by Iran's allies.) The 2003 US invasion of Iraq accomplished what Khomeini's army could not. Today, the Shiite-controlled lands extend to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain, a Persian Gulf kingdom with a Shiite majority and a Sunni monarch, is most affected by these developments; but so is Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which is home to most of the kingdom's Shiites. (They may even be a majority in the province but this is unknown as Saudi Arabia has not dared to conduct a census.) The US Navy has its most important Persian Gulf base in Bahrain while most of Saudi Arabia's oil is under the Eastern Province.

I imagine the administration's brinkmanship throughout the year has forced a shift among foreign policy liberals such as Nasr and Takeyh: We have, on the one hand, the claim that Iraq has destabilized the region, with Iran emerging as a new systemic power broker; while on the other hand we have a newer softening line that suggests Iran's not as dangerous as the administration asserts. Hmm?? Having our cake...?

A second major claim by the authors indicates that threat perception of Iran among Arab states varies widely: Some Arab regime worry about Iranian power, others not so much:

The Bush administration's strategy also fails to appreciate the diverse views of Arab states. Arab regimes are indeed worried about Iran, but they are not uniformly so. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain decry Iranian expansionism and fear Tehran's interference in their internal affairs. But Egypt and Jordan worry mostly that Iran's newfound importance is eroding their standing in the region. The stake for them is not territory or internal stability but influence over the Palestinian issue. Even within the Persian Gulf region, there is no anti-Iranian consensus. Unlike Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, for example, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates do not suffer a Shiite minority problem and have enjoyed extensive economic relations with Tehran since the mid-1990s. Far from seeking confrontation with Iran, they fear the consequences of escalating tensions between it and the United States. Even U.S. allies in the Middle East will assess their capabilities and vulnerabilities, shape their alliances, and pursue their interests with the understanding that they, too, are susceptible to Iran's influence. A U.S. containment strategy that assumes broad Arab solidarity is unsound in theory.

Perhaps, although the Los Angeles Times suggests that the NIE has signaled to some regional states a reduction of U.S. influence in the Middle East, as well as an increasingly free hand for Iran to fulfill its ambitions of regional dominance:

The dwindling possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran is changing the dynamics of Middle East politics and raising Arab concern that Tehran may now feel emboldened to strengthen its military, increase its support for Islamic radicals and exert more influence in the region's troubled countries.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations opposed military action against Iran's nuclear program. But, analysts said, those governments were privately relieved that U.S. threats helped to further preoccupy Tehran, which had irritated much of the Arab world with its deep involvement in the politics of Iraq and Lebanon and support for the radical Palestinian group Hamas.

The U.S. intelligence report released Monday, which says Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, has eased international pressure for sanctions and invigorated the Islamic Republic's hard-liners. This comes as the Arab world has been trying to counter Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric and his government's influence over the presidential turmoil in Lebanon, the politics in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The report did not allay Arab fears over Iran's nuclear intentions and its program to enrich uranium.

The same day the intelligence assessment was made public, Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian president to attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The meeting in Doha, Qatar, was hailed by many as a symbolic milestone to defuse decades of tensions between Shiite-dominated Iran and other oil-producing, mostly Sunni nations of the region. The Iranian leader, however, said little at the meeting to calm nerves about his country's regional ambitions.

Suspicion that Iran seeks to dominate the Persian Gulf region has prompted some Middle Eastern states -- including Saudi Arabia, which the U.S. regards as the leading Arab voice -- to increase military spending.

"There's no trust on the Arab side about Iran's intentions," said Christian Koch, research director for international studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "There are concerns of Iran's nuclear program for military purposes. There are concerns about Iran's influence in Iraq, over the unsettled political situation in Lebanon and over the dispute regarding" three gulf islands in Iran's control that are claimed by the United Arab Emirates.

Most importantly, Nasr and Takeyh argue the American weakness over Iran counsels not power politics but diplomacy, and especially the creation of regional institutions of multilateral cooperation - something of a "new order" for the Middle East:

Instead of focusing on restoring a former balance of power, the United States would be wise to aim for regional integration and foster a new framework in which all the relevant powers would have a stake in a stable status quo. The Bush administration is correct to sense that a truculent Iran poses serious challenges to U.S. concerns, but containing Iran through military deployment and antagonistic alliances simply is not a tenable strategy. Iran is not, despite common depictions, a messianic power determined to overturn the regional order in the name of Islamic militancy; it is an unexceptionally opportunistic state seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood. Thus, the task at hand for Washington is to create a situation in which Iran will find benefit in limiting its ambitions and in abiding by international norms.

This call for greater attention to institutions and norms, I would argue, is Nasr and Takeyh's ultimate goal. But adopting such a shift - at least wholesale - holds disastrous implications.

The Western democracies have worked through international institutions for the last four years to rein-in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Even if Iran indeed curtailed its weapons program in 2003 (which would take some willing suspension of disbelief), the fact remains that continuance of Tehran's peaceful nuclear development program will generate the scientific expertise and programatic infrastructure needed for nuclear weapons capability.

In addition, no one can be completely certain exactly what's happening inside Iran - in terms of both its arms procurement and foreign policy intentions. We do know that Iran is one of the world's most dangerous sponsors of international terrorism, its terrorist proxies battled for Israel's destruction in the 2006 Mideast war, and the ultimate acquisition of nuclear capability would introduce an unacceptable level of instability to a region already in the grips of catastrophic danger.

The United States needs to continue with a combination of containment and sanctions, but we should never let down our guard by ceding influence and capability to some shady regional multilateral grouping of appeasement hawks.

An Imminent Attack on Iran?

Thomas Joscelyn has an interesting essay up at the Weekly Standard calling out Seymour Hersh for his alarmist reporting the Bush administration's Iran policy. Hersh's most recent article in the New Yorker is one in a line of pieces warning of an imminent U.S. attack on Iran. Joscelyn notes that Hersh's warnings have been wrong (the urgency dates back to early-2006), and thus the tone of this most recent piece ("Shifting Targets") has backed off a bit from the earlier dire tocsins:

IN THE LATEST EDITION of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh returns to one of his favorite themes: The Bush administration is preparing for war with Iran. Well, that is, may be preparing for war with Iran.

Anyone familiar with Hersh's writing these last couple of years knows that he has been fixated on claims from anonymous spooks and foreign policy luminaries concerning the Bush administration's supposed dastardly designs on Iran. His latest piece does not disappoint. Former and anonymous CIA officials opine on the Bush administration's gameplan for attacking Iran. The suddenly once-again-in-demand foreign policy guru Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has never shown any particular proclivity for diagnosing Iran or the Middle East correctly, tells Hersh's readers what he has heard about "limited bombing plans for Iran." And, in a new twist, David Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the UN, tells Hersh that he thought General Petraeus exaggerated the extent of Iran's nefarious activities inside Iraq.

All in all, one is left with the same impression as after having read any of Hersh's previous contributions to the "neoconservatives vs. Iran" genre. Hersh and his sources believe that the Bush administration is hyping the threat from Iran in preparations for a war (of some sort), which will be disastrous for the U.S. and the Middle East.

Perhaps feeling a bit like the boy who cried wolf once too often, however, Hersh takes a half-step back in his latest piece. He still believes "there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning," which he does not really explain. But, Hersh tells us, he "was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the 'execute order' that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued."

Hersh has good reasons for this newfound hesitancy. In April of 2006, he wrote that the Bush administration "has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack." In November 2006, in the wake of the midterm elections, Hersh pondered: "Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?" He found ample reasons to think that Vice President Cheney and his attending neoconservatives would remain undeterred. And then in March of this year, Hersh told his readers that the Bush administration's new strategy for the Middle East "has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran."

So, in Seymour Hersh's world, the war with Iran has been imminent for at least 18 months now.

Joscelyn notes that while Hersh's claims may indeed prove correct, there's a deeper maliciousness infecting Hersh's project:

He is so myopically focused on exposing malfeasance--both real and imagined--on the part of the executive branch that he ignores legitimate concerns about Iran's ongoing role in the terrorists' worldwide war.

This last point is a basic problem among left-wing critics of the administration's foreign relations with Iran: Many lefties evince very little willingness to consider the real stakes involved in preventing Iranian acquisition of nuclear capability. While Iran's nuclear development program is years from maturity, the severity of the growing challenge in not dismissed by analysts. As Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh noted in their recent article, " Iran’s Nuclear Challenge":

Once Iran completes the necessary infrastructure, from mining to enriching uranium at the suitable weapons-grade level, and masters the engineering skill required to assemble a bomb, it could cross the threshold in a short period of time. All this would depend on the scope and scale of the program and the level of national resources committed to this task. Iran today does have an accelerated program, but not a crash program similar to Pakistan’s in the early 1970s, when the entirety of national energies was mobilized behind the task of constructing a nuclear device. In this context, Iran’s persistent determination to complete the fuel cycle — which it has a right to do under the NPT — is ominous, because doing so would bring the country close to a weapons capability.

Joscelyn's piece goes even further in elucidating the Iranian danger. It turns out that Robert Baer's 2002 book, See No Evil, made a powerful case tying Iranian-backed proxy group Hezbollah to the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Hersh himself endorsed Baer's reporting by writing the introduction to the book, and a Hezbollah/al Qaeda link was corroborated in the investigations of the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission.

What's also interesting is that contrary to Hersh's recent reporting, the Washington consensus indicates that the administration is in fact highly averse to a military solution to the Iranian crisis (in other words, despite all the doomsday scenarios, the incessant warnings of an attack dramatically overestimate the likelihood of such).

Note also the strategic and logistical obstacles to an Iranian military strike. According to Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, and son of the late liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in the New York Review, the U.S. is limited in its ability to rein in Iran's nuclear program:

The United States has two options for dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities: military strikes to destroy them or negotiations to neutralize them. The first is risky and the second may not produce results. So far, the Bush administration has not pursued either option, preferring UN sanctions (which, so far, have been more symbolic than punitive) and relying on Europeans to take the lead in negotiations. But neither sanctions nor the European initiative is likely to work. As long as Iran's primary concern is the United States, it is unlikely to settle for a deal that involves only Europe.

Sustained air strikes probably could halt Iran's nuclear program. While some Iranian facilities may be hidden and others protected deep underground, the locations of major facilities are known. Even if it is not possible to destroy all the facilities, Iran's scientists, engineers, and construction crews are unlikely to show up for work at places that are subject to ongoing bombing.

But the risks from air strikes are great. Many of the potential targets are in populated places, endangering civilians both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal of radioactive material. The rest of the world would condemn the attacks and there would likely be a virulent anti-US reaction in the Islamic world. In retaliation, Iran could wreak havoc on the world economy (and its own) by withholding oil from the global market and by military action to close the Persian Gulf shipping lanes.

The main risk to the US comes in Iraq. Faced with choosing between the US and Iran, Iraq's government may not choose its liberator. And even if the Iraqi government did not openly cooperate with the Iranians, pro-Iranian elements in the US-armed military and police almost certainly would facilitate attacks on US troops by pro-Iranian Iraqi militia or by Iranian forces infiltrated across Iraq's porous border. A few days after Bush's August 28 speech, Iranian General Rahim Yahya Safavi underscored Iran's ability to retaliate, saying of US troops in the region: "We have accurately identified all their camps." Unless he chooses to act with reckless disregard for the safety of US troops in Iraq, President Bush has effectively denied himself a military option for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

Galbraith's obviously a member in good standing of the left-wing diplomatic establishment (and thus largely predisposed against a military option), yet the basic notion of an overstretched military is supported by some members of the Army general staff.

Despite the dire warnings of Hersh (and the endless legions of hard-left bloggers denouncing the administration's "rush to war"), the current strategic and logistical situation makes a preventive strike unlikely at this time.

Yet even Hersh himself has recognized the gravity of Iran's threat to international security. So, make no mistake: Given Iran's dismissal of the Security Council's antiproliferation sanctions, its continued support for terrorist proxies around the world, and its avowed rejection of Israel's right to exist, ending the threat from Iran may eventually warrant exercizing the military option.

Iran Fighting Proxy War Against U.S., Crocker Says

The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, has indicated that Tehran has used Iraq to launch a proxy war against the United States.

The New York Times has the story:

Iran is engaging in a proxy war with the United States in Iraq, adopting tactics similar to those it has used to back fighters in Lebanon, the United States ambassador to Iraq said Friday.

The remarks by the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, reflected the sharper criticism of Iran by President Bush and his top deputies over the past week, as administration officials have sought to trace many of their troubles in Iraq to Iran.

Mr. Crocker said in an interview that there had been no substantive change in Iranian behavior in Iraq, despite more than a year of talks between the Bush administration and Iran over how to calm Shiite-Sunni tensions in Iraq. He said that the paramilitary branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was continuing to direct attacks by Shiite militias against American and Iraqi targets, although he offered no direct evidence.

Asked if the United States and Iran were engaged in a proxy war in Iraq, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t think a proxy war is being waged from an American point of view.” But, he added, “When you look at what the Iranians are doing and how they’re doing it, it could well be that.”

While Bush administration officials have long denounced what they have described as Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Mr. Crocker’s language was unusually strong, reflecting fresh concern about what he described in Congressional testimony this week as Iran’s role in supplying militias with training and weapons, including rockets used in recent attacks on the Green Zone, in Baghdad.

The Bush administration is trying to exploit any crack it can find between the largely Shiite, pro-Iranian government of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and Iran’s Shiite government. On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that Iran’s role in supporting radical Shiite militias in recent clashes with Iraqi security forces had been an “eye-opener” for the central government in Baghdad.

“I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and support to these groups,” Mr. Gates said. “I would say one of the salutary effects of what Prime Minister Maliki did in Basra is that I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran’s activities inside Iraq.”

From Mr. Bush down, administration officials this week have been turning up the volume on Iran. Administration officials said that Iranian support for Shiite militias became increasingly evident late last month during the indecisive Iraqi operation to wrest control of Basra from Shiite militias, in addition to the rocket attacks on the Green Zone.

Administration officials have long accused Iran of supporting Shiite militias in attacks on American forces in Iraq. The difference now is that administration officials are trying to convince the Iraqi government that Iran may not be the ally it thought, and is behind attacks against Iraqi government forces. That is a harder sell, given that Iran has supported Iraq’s government.

Mr. Bush this week accused Iran of arming, financing and training what he called “illegal militant groups.” He said that Iran had a choice, and hinted that the United States would try to sow distrust between the governments of Iran and Iraq, if Iran did not stop backing the attacks.

“If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq,” he said Thursday. “If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.”

See also, Thomas Jocelyn "Iran's Proxy War Against America" (Claremont Institute), Joseph Lieberman, "Iran's Proxy War" (Wall Street Journal), and Kenneth Timmerman, "Iran's Proxy War Against America" (FrontPageMagazine).

Photo Credit: New York Times

Biden's Drive to War in the Middle East (VIDEO)

It's Caroline Glick:

On Monday, Iran tested a new rocket. The Zuljanah rocket is a 25-meter (82-foot) three-stage rocket with a solid fuel engine for its first two stages and a liquid fuel rocket for its third stage. It can carry a 225 kg (496-pound) payload.

The Zuljanah’s thrust is 75 kilotons, which is far more than required to launch satellite into orbit. The large thrust makes the Zuljanah more comparable to an intercontinental ballistic missile than a space launch vehicle. The US’s LGM-30G Minuteman-III land-based ICBM for instance, has 90 kiloton thrust. The Zuljanah can rise to a height of 500 kilometers for low-earth orbit or, if launched as a missile, its range is 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) – far enough to reach Britain from Iran.

Israeli missile experts estimate that Iran has paid $250 million to develop the Zuljanah project. Monday’s rocket launch itself likely cost tens of millions of dollars.

Iran is in deep economic distress today. Between the COVID-19 global recession, Iran’s endemic corruption and mismanagement and US economic sanctions, 35% of Iranians live in abject poverty today. Iran’s rial has lost 80% of its value over the past four years. Official data place the unemployment rate at 25% but the number is thought to be much higher. Inflation last year stood at 44% overall. Food prices have risen 59%.

When viewed in the context of Iran’s impoverishment, the government’s investment in a thinly disguised ICBM program is all the more revealing. With 35% of the population living in utter destitution and food prices rising steeply, the regime has chosen ICBMs over feeding its people.

Most of the media coverage of the Zuljanah launch failed to register the significance of the project both for what it says about Iran’s capabilities and what it says about the regime’s intentions. Instead, the coverage focused on the timing of the test. The Iranians conducted the test as they flamboyantly breach the limitations on their nuclear activities which they accepted when they agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Iranians are now enriching uranium to 20% purity – well beyond the 3.67% permitted under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA). They are using prohibited advanced centrifuges for enrichment in cascades at their Natanz nuclear installation. They are beginning uranium cascades with sixth generation centrifuges at their underground Fordo nuclear reactor in total defiance of the JCPOA. They are stockpiling uranium yellowcake far beyond the quantities permitted in the deal. They are producing uranium metal in breach of the deal. And they are test firing rockets that can easily be converted to nuclear capable ICBMs.

Reportage of Iran’s aggressive nuclear has presented it in the context of the new Biden administration in Washington. It is argued that Iran is taking these aggressive steps to pressure the Biden administration to keep its word to return the US to the JCPOA and abrogate economic sanctions on Iran. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump renounced the JCPOA and re-imposed the economic sanctions that were abrogated in 2015 with the deal’s implementation. Iran’s idea is that out of fear of its rapid nuclear strides, the Biden team will move urgently to appease Iran.

Notably, the Zuljanah test exposed the strategic insanity at the heart of deal, which was conceived, advanced and concluded by then-President Barack Obama and his senior advisors.

The main strategic assumption that guided Obama and his advisors was that Iran was a status quo, responsible power and should be viewed as part of the solution – or “the solution” — rather than the problem in the Middle East. Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its proxy wars and its nuclear program were unfortunate consequences of a regional power balance that put too much power in the hands of US allies – first and foremost Israel and Saudi Arabia – and too little power in Iran’s hands. To stabilize the Middle East, Obama argued, Iran needed to be empowered and US allies needed to be weakened. As then-Vice President Joe Biden put it in 2013, “Our biggest problem was our allies.” A new balance of power, Obama argued would respect Iran’s “equities” in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. As for the nuclear program, which was illegal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed, it was totally understandable. Given that Pakistan, India and allegedly Israel have nuclear arsenals, Obama’s advisors said, Iran’s desire for one was reasonable.

With this outlook informing its negotiators, the JCPOA’s legitimization of Iran’s nuclear program makes sense. The purpose of the deal wasn’t to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It was to “balance” Israel by delegitimizing any Israeli action to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

While Israel and America’s other allies would be massively harmed by this new balance of power, Obama and his European partners assessed that they would be more secure. They were convinced that once secure in its position as a regional hegemon, Iran would leave them alone.

The deal reflected this view. A non-binding clause in the JCPOA calls for Iran to limit the range of its ballistic missiles to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) – taking the US and most of Europe out of range.

Many commentators view the Biden administration nothing more than Obama’s third term. And from the perspective of its Iran policies, this is certainly the case. President Joe Biden’s Iran policy was conceived and is being implemented by the same people who negotiated the JCPOA under Obama...

She nails it, as usual (and there's more at the link).  

Delays in U.S.-Iran Nuclear Diplomacy

At the Miami Herald, "Talks with Iran produce delays, not progress":

To almost no one’s surprise, the latest round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program produced no progress, and concluded with an agreement to meet again and hold more talks. Once again, world leaders — and Iran — have opted to kick the problem down road, each hoping to obtain a different result.

If there is one thing that Europe, the United States and Iran agree on right now is that nobody wants a war to start, not yet.

Even though Iran rejected a new set of proposals presented at the Baghdad meeting by the so-called P5+1 — the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany — everyone smiled faintly and agreed to another set of meetings in Moscow this June.

Even if U.S. officials became convinced that there is no chance Iran will ever compromise on its nuclear program, the Obama administration does not want a war with Iran at this time, since it could affect the November elections. Europe, for its part, is terrified of a conflict that could send oil prices higher and raise even more obstacles during an economic crisis.

Iran wants to continue making progress towards its nuclear goals, and it wants the world to start gradually accepting that it will not dismantle its nuclear facilities. Even if Tehran agrees at the last minute to stop short of building a weapon, it hopes to hold on to as much of the program as possible so that it can either cheat after an agreement or freeze progress at a point where Iranian nuclear engineers have only a short sprint left to build the bomb.

Iran’s nuclear advisor Hamidreza Taraghi recently boasted to The New York Times of how the West has gradually come to accept Iran’s crossing of “red lines.” First, he explained, the West said Iran could not have a nuclear reactor. Then it said it would not tolerate heavy-water facilities. Then it drew the line at uranium enrichment. Iran has crossed all the lines, and all of these are now elements of Iran’s nuclear program, apparently accepted by the West.

But Washington and its allies — and much of the world — say Iran should not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. President Obama says that the United States will do whatever it takes to prevent it. And there is surprising international support for that position.

A new Pew poll of 21 countries showed widespread opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran weapon, not only in the West but also in Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. Majorities, in fact, expressed support for military intervention in a number of countries, including the United States, Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Poland and others.

The U.N.’s nuclear agency has expressed deep concerns about possible “military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. U.N. inspectors just announced finding traces of 27-percent enriched uranium, the highest yet, and after Baghdad talks Iran repeated it sees no reason to halt uranium enrichment to levels much higher than civilian uses require.

The United States, Israel and many others believe Tehran’s ultimate aim is to produce nuclear weapons, while Iran maintains it is enriching uranium only to develop energy and medical isotopes.

Despite its claims to have only peaceful intentions, Iranian officials made statements ahead of the Baghdad talks that served as a reminder of why the world — and Israel in particular — are so nervous about the prospects of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran will eventually deploy strategic nuclear weapons --- that is, unless Israel acts preemptively first, which I think is a good possibility. And thank goodness for that.

IMAGE HAT TIP: Moonbattery.

Targeted Force Only Option Left on Iran

Over at the New York Post, John Bolton argues that after four years of failed negotiations, a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear problem is beyond hope. Ministers from the permanant members of the U.N. Security Council met last week for another round of multilateral futility in stopping Iran's march to nuclear readiness:

This pattern of failed diplomacy has gone on for over four years, starting with the efforts of Britain, France and Germany ("the EU-3") to talk Iran out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons....

Unfortunately, the EU-3's fascination with negotiations lost sight of the ultimate objective - preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons - and became an end in itself. For the EU-3, the process became more important than the substance, especially the unstated but obvious EU-3 agenda of dealing with a proliferation threat their way, rather than resorting to military force, as the United States did against Saddam Hussein.

The result of more than four years of EU-3 negotiation is that Iran is more than four years closer to a nuclear-weapons capacity, and the United States and the world are in greater danger. I believe it was obvious from the outset that Iran wasn't going to renounce its quest for nuclear weapons voluntarily because it was part of a much larger strategy. The stakes were and are high: whether Iran and its radical Shiite version of Islam become dominant throughout the Muslim world, whether largely Persian Iran achieves effective hegemony in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and whether a nuclear, terror-financing Iran emerges on the global stage as a real power.

Chitchat by complacent and languorous European and State Department negotiators isn't enough to divert a theocratic autocracy like Iran's from its long-standing strategic course. To the contrary, the years of failed diplomacy gave Iran something it couldn't have bought with all of its oil revenues: time. Time is usually on the side of the would-be proliferators, and that has been true in spades for Iran. While the EU-3 thought they were "negotiating," Iran was perfecting the critical technique of converting uranium from a solid to a gas and then mastering the uranium-enrichment process to produce weapons-grade uranium. The timing on actual weaponization is now essentially in the hands of the mullahs. With oil at $90 a barrel, resources aren't a problem.

Thus, as a consequence of heedless, failed diplomacy, our options on Iran are limited, unless, as some believe, we can live with a nuclear Iran. Of course, that would leave to the likes of President Ahmadinejad the decision whether and when to use Iran's weapons. This isn't a happy prospect. As Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman once said insightfully, "Ahmadinejad denies the existence of the original Holocaust while preparing for the next one."

Regime change in Iran is the preferred option, and a feasible one given the regime's weakness. Rampant economic discontent caused by 28 years of economic mismanagement, the desires of younger Iranians to be freed from the mullahs' theology and dissatisfaction among Iran's ethnic minorities are all fertile breeding grounds for discontent. If we had supported and encouraged this dissent for the last four years, we might now be on the verge of regime change.

Absent regime change, the targeted use of force against Iran's program is the only option left. Risky and unattractive as it is, the choice may well be between the use of force and a nuclear Iran, which is really not a choice at all. Iran is already asserting itself in ways profoundly hostile to our interests and those of our close friends. Imagine adding Iranian nuclear weapons to that equation. That's why surrender is not an option.

Bolton's clarity on the Iranian threat is unsurpassed (a point that obviously doesn't sit well with the hard-left surrender forces).

Bolton's new book is Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad. The book's reviewed in today's Wall Street Journal, and Brendan Simms, the reviewer, notes that Bolton's no neocon.

**********

UPDATE: Via Goat's Barnyard, be sure to check out Bolton's interview with Hugh Hewitt at Townhall.

What Tehran is Likely to Do Next

I think we're at war already.

It's been proxy war for 40 years.

The latest is the rocket strikes on Iraqi military bases (targeting American personnel).

No casualties yet, but this latest conflagration is really just getting started. Neither side seems to want deescalation, and each side's target domestic audience is highly supportive of the action, and thus there's little political incentive to stand down.

I'll have more, as I always do.

In any case, from Ilan Goldenberg, at Foreign Affairs, "Will Iran’s Response to the Soleimani Strike Lead to War?":

Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, was one of the most influential and popular figures in the Islamic Republic and a particular nemesis of the United States. He led Iran’s campaign to arm and train Shiite militias in Iraq—militias responsible for the deaths of an estimated 600 American troops from 2003 to 2011— and became the chief purveyor of Iranian political influence in Iraq thereafter, most notably through his efforts to fight the Islamic State (ISIS). He drove Iran’s policies to arm and support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including by deploying an estimated 50,000 Shiite militia fighters to Syria. He was the point man for Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah in Lebanon, helping to supply the group with missiles and rockets to threaten Israel. He drove Iran’s strategy to arm the Houthis in Yemen. For all these reasons and more, Soleimani was a cult hero in Iran and across the region.

In short, the United States has taken a highly escalatory step in assassinating one of the most important and powerful men in the Middle East.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump argues that Soleimani was a terrorist and that assassinating him was a defensive action that stopped an imminent attack. Both of those assertions may or may not be true, but the United States would never have felt compelled to act against the Iranian general if not for the reckless policy the administration has pursued since it came into office. In May 2018, Trump left the Iran nuclear agreement and adopted a “maximum pressure” policy of economic sanctions on Iran. For a year, Iran responded with restraint in an effort to isolate the United States diplomatically and win economic concessions from other parties to the nuclear agreement.

But the restrained approach failed to yield material benefits. By May 2019, Tehran had chosen instead to breach the agreement and escalate tensions across the region. First came Iranian mine attacks against international shipping in May and June. Then Iran shot down a U.S. drone, nearly touching off an open conflict with the United States. In September, Iranian missiles struck the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia—arguably the most important piece of oil infrastructure in the world. Shiite militia groups began launching rockets at U.S. bases in Iraq, ultimately leading to the death of an American contractor last week. Retaliatory U.S. strikes eventually brought us to the Soleimani assassination.

The most important question now is how will Iran respond. The Islamic Republic’s behavior over the past few months and over its long history suggests that it may not rush to retaliate. Rather, it will carefully and patiently choose an approach that it deems effective, and it will likely try to avoid an all-out war with the United States. Nonetheless, the events of the past few days demonstrate that the risk of miscalculation is incredibly high. Soleimani clearly didn’t believe that the United States was going to dramatically escalate or he wouldn’t have left himself so vulnerable, only a stone’s throw away from U.S. military forces in Iraq. For his part, Trump has been adamant about his lack of interest in starting a new war in the Middle East—and yet, here we are at the precipice.

The United States must, at a minimum, expect to find itself in conflict with Shiite militias in Iraq that will target U.S. forces, diplomats, and civilians. Iraq is the theater where the U.S. strike took place and therefore the most rational place for Iran to immediately respond. Moreover, the militia groups have already been escalating their activities over the past six months. They are among Iran’s most responsive proxies and will be highly motivated, given that Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, one of their top commanders, was killed in the strike along with Soleimani.

Whether a U.S. presence in Iraq is still viable remains an open question. The security situation, which has certainly now been complicated, is not the only problem. The assassination was such an extreme violation of Iraqi sovereignty—done unilaterally, without Iraqi government consent—that Iraqi officials will come under tremendous political pressure to eject U.S. forces. Many Iraqis have no love for either the United States or Iran. They just want to have their country back to themselves and fear being put in the middle of a U.S.-Iranian confrontation. The current situation could turn into a worst-case scenario for these citizens.

But a chaotic U.S. withdrawal under fire could also present real dangers. The mission to counter ISIS remains a going concern, and if the United States is forced to leave Iraq, that effort could suffer a serious blow. ISIS retains an underground presence and could take advantage of the chaos of an American withdrawal or a U.S.-Iranian conflict to improve its position in Iraq.

The repercussions of the assassination won’t necessarily be confined to Iraq. Lebanese Hezbollah, which enjoys a close relationship with Iran and is likely to be responsive to Iranian requests, could attack American targets in Lebanon. Even if Iran decides to avoid a major escalation in Lebanon, Hezbollah operatives are distributed throughout the Middle East and could attack the United States elsewhere in the region. Alternatively, Hezbollah may choose to launch missile attacks on Israeli territory, although this response is less likely. Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war with Israel that would devastate Lebanon, and the Trump administration has publicly taken credit for killing Soleimani, increasing the likelihood that a retaliatory strike will target the United States directly.

Iran could conduct missile strikes against U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates or against oil facilities in the Gulf. The accuracy of Iran’s missile strikes on the Abqaiq oil facility in September took the United States and the rest of the world by surprise, although Iran did purposefully attempt to keep the attack limited and symbolic. In the current climate, Iran could choose to become much more aggressive, calculating that in the arena of missile strikes it has been highly successful in landing blows while avoiding retaliation over the past six months.

We should also expect Iran to significantly accelerate its nuclear program. Since the Trump administration left the Iran nuclear agreement in May 2018, Iran has been quite restrained in its nuclear response. After a year of staying in the deal, in May 2019, Iran began to incrementally violate the agreement by taking small steps every 60 days. The next 60-day window ends next week, and it is hard to imagine restraint in the wake of Soleimani’s death. At a minimum, Iran will restart enriching uranium to 19.75 percent, a significant step toward weapons-grade uranium. It has recently threatened to go even further by walking away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or kicking out inspectors. These would be profoundly dangerous moves, and until this week most analysts believed Tehran was unlikely to actually make them. Now they may well be on the table.

Perhaps the most provocative thing Iran could do is carry out a terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland or attempt to kill a senior U.S. official of Soleimani’s stature...

Was President Bush Behind the NEI Report? An Update

This entry is a follow-up to my previous post, "Was President Bush Behind the NIE Report?" I noted there that Robert Baer, the author of a Time piece arguing Bush greenlighted the NIE, "provides absolutely no evidence for his claims, so I lend no credence to this analysis."

Caroline Glick has followed this up with an excellent essay weighing the Baer assertion, "The abandonment of the Jews." Here's the introduction:

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear intentions is the political version of a tactical nuclear strike on efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs.

The NIE begins with the sensationalist opening line: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program." But the rest of the report contradicts the lead sentence. For instance, the second line says, "We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Teheran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

Indeed, contrary to that earth-shattering opening, the NIE acknowledges that the Iranians have an active nuclear program and that they are between two and five years away from nuclear capabilities.

The NIE's final sentence: "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so," only emphasizes that US intelligence agencies view Iran's nuclear program as a continuous and increasing threat rather than a suspended and diminishing one.

But the content of the NIE is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the opening line - as the report's authors no doubt knew full well when they wrote it. With that opening line, the NIE effectively takes the option of American use of force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons off the table.

There are two possible explanations for why President George W. Bush permitted this strange report to be published. Either he doesn't wish to attack Iran, or he was compelled by the intelligence bureaucracy to accept that he can't attack Iran.

Arguing the former in Time magazine, former CIA agent Robert Baer explained, "While the 16 agencies that make up the 'intelligence community' contribute to each National Intelligence Estimate, you can bet that an explosive 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the president."

The alternative view - that Bush was forced to accept the report against his will - is also possible. The report's primary authors, Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill are all State Department officials on loan to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal, all three are reputed to be deeply partisan and hostile to Bush's foreign policy goals. Furthermore, for the past four years the three have reportedly worked studiously to downplay the danger of Iran's nuclear weapons program and to discredit their opponents within the administration.

Thursday The New York Times ran a story detailing the process in which the NIE was collated that lends credence to the view that Bush was compelled to accept it. According to the Times, in the months preceding the NIE's publication, Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, purposely prevented the White House from seeing any of the raw intelligence data on which the NIE's radical conclusion on Iran was drawn. This alone indicates that the intelligence community may well have presented Bush with a fait accompli.

But it really doesn't make a difference one way or another. Whether the president agrees or disagrees with the NIE, he is boxed in just the same. The NIE denies him the option of taking military action against Iran's nuclear program for the duration of his tenure in office. So for at least 14 months, Iran has nothing to worry about from Washington.

And the NIE's political repercussions extend well beyond the current administration. Today, no Democratic presidential candidate will dare to question the opening line of the report. The Democratic Congressional leaders are demanding that the administration immediately open bilateral talks with Iran. And Senator Hillary Clinton is being pilloried by her party rivals for her Senate vote in favor of classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.

That nails it. The NIE will be the retreatists' gift that keeps on giving in 2008. But read the rest of Glick's entry, where she argues that the ultimate result of the Iran report will be the abandonment of Israel to full strategic isolation vis-a-vis the Persian menace.

Today's Wall Street Journal has more on the "Iran Curveball":

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of this week's national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of "nuclear weapons program" does "not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

In fact, the main reason to be concerned about Iran is that we can't trust this distinction between civilian and military. That distinction is real in a country like Japan. But we know Iran lied about its secret military efforts until it was discovered in 2003, and Iran continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, with 3,000 centrifuges, in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions. There is no civilian purpose for such enrichment. Iran has access to all the fuel it needs for civilian nuclear power from Russia at the plant in Bushehr. The NIE buries the potential danger from this enrichment, even though this enrichment has been the main focus of U.S. diplomacy against Iran.

In this regard, it's hilarious to see the left and some in the media accuse Mr. Bush once again of distorting intelligence. The truth is the opposite. The White House was presented with this new estimate only weeks ago, and no doubt concluded it had little choice but to accept and release it however much its policy makers disagreed. Had it done otherwise, the finding would have been leaked and the Administration would have been assailed for "politicizing" intelligence.
The result is that we now have NIE judgments substituting for policy in a dangerous way. For one thing, these judgments are never certain, and policy in a dangerous world has to account for those uncertainties. We know from our own sources that not everyone in American intelligence agrees with this NIE "consensus," and the Israelis have already made clear they don't either. The Jerusalem Post reported this week that Israeli defense officials are exercised enough that they will present their Iran evidence to Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he visits that country tomorrow.

For that matter, not even the diplomats at the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency agree with the NIE. "To be frank, we are more skeptical," a senior official close to the agency told the New York Times this week. "We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, is also skeptical enough that he wants Congress to establish a bipartisan panel to explore the NIE's evidence. We hope he keeps at it.

You can say that again!

The editors note that the NIE is weakening international consensus on Iran, with China and Russia seeking an easy alternative to a firm riposte. But like Glick, the Journal editorial board's not going easy on the administration:

We reported earlier this week that the authors of this Iran NIE include former State Department officials who have a history of hostility to Mr. Bush's foreign policy. But the ultimate responsibility for this fiasco lies with Mr. Bush. Too often he has appointed, or tolerated, officials who oppose his agenda, and failed to discipline them even when they have worked against his policies. Instead of being candid this week about the problems with the NIE, Mr. Bush and his National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, tried to spin it as a victory for their policy. They simply weren't believable.

It's a sign of the Bush Administration's flagging authority that even many of its natural allies wondered this week if the NIE was really an attempt to back down from its own Iran policy. We only wish it were that competent.

Finally, check out Charles Krauthammer's essay on the Iran report over at Time, where he concludes, "there is no reasonable argument for taking military action off the table."

Was President Bush Behind the NIE Report?

Robert Baer, over at Time, speculates that President Bush gave the thumbs up for the NIE Iran report:

Bombing Iran, it seems, is now off the table. There's no other reasonable take on the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concludes Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

But there is also no doubt that the Bush White House was behind this NIE. While the 16 intelligence agencies that make up the "intelligence community" contribute to each National Intelligence Estimate, you can bet that an explosive, 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the President.

And explode is what the hawks in and outside the Administration are about to do. They were counting on Bush being the one President prepared to take on Iran. As recently as last month, Bush warned of World War III if Iran so much as thought about building a bomb. Bush's betrayal is not going to go down well. The neocons, clinging to a sliver of hope, will accuse the intelligence community of incompetence, pointing out that as late as 2005 it estimated "with high confidence" that Iran was building a bomb.

Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, put the best face on the new report, claiming that it was our diplomacy and saber rattling that forced the Iranians to back down. As for the intelligence community, it explained its reversal by hinting that new intelligence had surfaced.

Neither explanation is entirely accurate. The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi'a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran's surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran's head.

Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they're not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don't even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can't do.

So how far is Iran from a nuke? The new NIE says 10 to 15 years, maybe. But that's a wild guess. The truth is that Iran is a black hole, and it's entirely conceivable Iran could build a bomb and we wouldn't know until they tested it.

Yet for now we should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.

Baer provides absolutely no evidence for his claims, so I lend no credence to this analysis.

Perhaps the administration is looking for some breathing room. But after mounting a strong PR campaign against Iran all year, and with success in Iraq giving the U.S. a platform to advance its agenda on Iran, it makes little sense to me to capitulate to Tehran.

Obama Administration to Back Iran Opposition

From the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Shifts Iran Focus to Support Opposition" (via Memeorandum):

The Obama administration is increasingly questioning the long-term stability of Tehran's government and moving to find ways to support Iran's opposition "Green Movement," said senior U.S. officials.

The White House is crafting new financial sanctions specifically designed to punish the Iranian entities and individuals most directly involved in the crackdown on Iran's dissident forces, said the U.S. officials, rather than just those involved in Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Treasury Department strategists already have been focusing on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In recent weeks, senior Green Movement figures -- who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks -- have made up a list of IRGC-related companies they suggest targeting, which has been forwarded to the Obama administration by third parties.

Names on the list include Iran's largest telecommunications provider, Telecommunication Company of Iran, which is majority-owned by the IRGC, and the Iranian Aluminum Co. A U.S. official involved in Iran said the administration wouldn't comment on whether it was acting on the information.

American diplomats, meanwhile, have begun drawing comparisons in public between Iran's current political turmoil and the events that led up to the 1979 overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

"In my opinion there are many similarities," the State Department's chief Iran specialist, John Limbert, told Iran-based listeners this week over U.S. government-run Radio Farda. "I think it's very hard for the government to decide how to react to the legitimate and lawful demands of the people."

Since the opposition movement's demonstrations recently peaked after the death of reformist Islamic cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a number of Iran scholars in the U.S. said they have been contacted by senior administration officials eager to understand if the Iranian unrest suggested a greater threat to Tehran's government than originally understood.

"The tone has changed in the conversation," said one scholar who discussed Iran with senior U.S. officials. "There's realization now that this unrest really matters."

In a signal of the White House's increased attention to Iran's political upheaval, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered over coffee at the State Department this week with four leading Iran scholars and mapped out the current dynamics, said U.S. officials. One issue explored was how the U.S. should respond if Tehran suddenly expressed a desire to reach a compromise on the nuclear issue. Mrs. Clinton asked whether the U.S. could reach a pact without crippling the prospects for the Green Movement.

U.S. allies are mixed in their response to the new focus. One senior Arab official said he told State Department officials this week they were deluded if they though Iran was close to experiencing a revolution reminiscent of the Shah's overthrow. "The IRGC has its hands on the Iranian people," the official said.

Cartoon Credit: Sparks from the Anvil.

Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy

Mohsen Milani, at Foreign Affairs, "Tehran's Take: Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy." The piece argues from the "rational actor" perspective, and I disagree with much of it. There's a bit of a "going Iran" approach that's too "Foggy Bottom-ish" for me. But Milani makes an intriguing suggestion that the Obama administration might mimic Nixon-Kissinger's Sino-U.S. policy by "opening Iran" to the West. In any case, it never hurts to read widely on the issues:

Although a great deal has been written about the United States' policy toward Iran, hardly anything comprehensive has been produced about Iran's policy toward the United States. Given Washington's concerns that the United States faces "no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," as the 2006 National Security Strategy put it, this lack of serious attention is astonishing. What does exist is sensationalistic coverage about Iran's nuclear ambitions and about mad mullahs driven by apocalyptic delusions and a martyr complex. That picture suggests that Iran's policy consists of a series of random hit-and-run assaults on U.S. interests and that its leaders, being irrational and undeterrable, must be eliminated by force.

In fact, Tehran's foreign policy has its own strategic logic. Formulated not by mad mullahs but by calculating ayatollahs, it is based on Iran's ambitions and Tehran's perception of what threatens them. Tehran's top priority is the survival of the Islamic Republic as it exists now. Tehran views the United States as an existential threat and to counter it has devised a strategy that rests on both deterrence and competition in the Middle East.

To deter any possible military actions by the United States and its allies, Iran is improving its retaliatory capabilities by developing the means to pursue asymmetric, low-intensity warfare, both inside and outside the country; modernizing its weapons; building indigenous missile and antimissile systems; and developing a nuclear program while cultivating doubts about its exact capability. And to neutralize the United States' attempts to contain it, the Iranian government is both undermining U.S. interests and increasing its own power in the vast region that stretches from the Levant and the Persian Gulf to the Caucasus and Central Asia. Although it is being careful to avoid a military confrontation with the United States, Tehran is maneuvering to prevent Washington from leading a united front against it and strategically using Iran's oil and gas resources to reward its friends.

Iranian foreign policy today is as U.S.-centric as it was before the 1979 revolution. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi relied on Washington to secure and expand his power; today, the Islamic Republic exploits anti-Americanism to do the same. Policy has been consistent over the years partly because it is determined by the supreme leader, who is also the commander of the security and armed forces and serves for life. Iran's defiance has in some ways undermined the country's national interests, but it has paid huge dividends to the ruling ayatollahs and helped them survive three tumultuous decades in power.

Today, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei is the supreme leader, and he makes all the key policy decisions, usually after Iran's major centers of power, including the presidency, have reached a consensus. This means that the outcome of the presidential election in June will have some, although probably limited, ramifications for Iran's foreign policy. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his two major reformist rivals, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have all supported engaging in negotiations with Washington -- a political taboo just a few years ago. Ahmadinejad would be less likely to compromise than his more moderate competitors, but, thanks to the support he has among major anti-American constituencies inside and outside the Iranian government, he would be in a better position to institutionalize any shift in policy. Although Iran's president can change tactical aspects of the country's foreign policy, he cannot single-handedly alter its essence. Only Khamenei, the ultimate decider, can do that. And he will do that only if a fundamental change in policy would not undermine his own authority and if it enjoys broad support from among the major centers of power.

Read the whole thing, here.

Related Photo Slideshow: "Excitement Builds for Iran Elections, " New York Times.