An Update on the NIE Spin in Washington and Tehran

I just saw this piece by Dennis Ross about the incompetent way the NIE was framed and presented to the American public and was stunned to read the following:

"...in 2005, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani told a visiting group of American experts, including George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment, that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons research. According to Perkovich, Rafsanjani said: "Look, as long as we can enrich uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don't need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions."

I could not believe it. The content of the 2007 NIE was already in the public domain, only not yet culled by the intelligence community?! In 2005, the head of Iran’s Expediency Council, and one of Iran’s most powerful politicians, admitted to an American non-proliferation advocate the existence of a nuclear weapons program that it had halted and this was not made news at the time! I do not mean only the halting part of it but also the admittance to a weapons program.

So I had to check and of course while what George Perkovich actually heard or said he heard was not made up, all inferences about a weapons program were clearly made up. Perkovich’s quote is from a piece in Washington Post by Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer framed in the following way:

"There had been clues for those willing to see them. …. And during a dinner in Tehran with visiting American experts in 2005, Iranian leaders Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rowhani flatly declared that the country's nuclear weapons research had been halted because Iran felt it did not need the actual bombs, only the ability to show the world it could. "Look, as long as we can enrich uranium and master the [nuclear] fuel cycle, we don't need anything else," Rafsanjani said at the dinner, according to George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions.""

How exactly the assertion that “as long can we can enrich uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don’t need anything else,” was turned into admittance that Iran had a nuclear weapons program that was halted is beyond me, but I guess this is the way “intelligence gathering” in the media and among pundits works. Factual leaps are made in order to suit the argument in the hope that no one checks.

So the leap makes sense in terms of the spin that is being placed on the NIE: Iran had intentions to build the weapons; it will continue to aspire for it through means that are allowed within the terms of its NPT obligations; and that is dangerous enough even if Iran actually doesn’t go for the bomb. Dennis Ross states the argument succinctly:

"Maybe, as Rafsanjani was suggesting, the Iranians will be satisfied only to foster the appearance of having nuclear weapons without actually producing them; for Rafsanjani, so long as Iran's neighbors assume it has nuclear weapons, they'll become responsive to Iran's wishes. But can we count on Iran's maintaining such a posture indefinitely? And even if we could, what would the Middle East look like if Iran gained far greater coercive leverage over all its neighbors? Wouldn't oil production policies be used to separate us from our allies or further manipulate the world's economy? Wouldn't we face a region increasingly hostile to our interests? Wouldn't we see the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace diminish as Iran worked to weaken, isolate, and demoralize the Jewish state? And to avoid being at the mercy of Iran, wouldn't the Saudis decide to go nuclear--and wouldn't that impel the Egyptians to do the same? The point is that even the image of Iran as a nuclear power carries with it very dangerous consequences, including that the Middle East might become a nuclear-armed region.”

Get it? Even if the “appearance” of Iran getting nuclear weapons is Tehran’s intent, Iran is still dangerous (even if we are the ones that have kept and keep making Iran appear as though it is getting nuclear weapons). Hence, Iran should be stopped from getting that appearance even if, Ross bemoans, the Bush Administration’s handling of the NIE release has made stopping Iran’s “virtual” weapon difficult if not impossible.

In some ways, despite the mendacity in reporting what Hashemi Rafsanjani said, Ross’ statement of what the Iran concern is all about is refreshingly honest. It is not about a nuclear weapons program that poses a physical threat to others but the strength Iran gains by appearing to have the bomb, which to Ross is still unacceptable and against American interests in the region. So the issue is not the oft-repeated and tired assertion that Iran is a "country whose leader wants to destroy Israel,” but Iran’s ability to “weaken, isolate, and demoralize the Jewish state.” Just how Iran’s “virtual” endowment of nuclear weapons will do this, Ross never explains.

Just in case, you are wondering what the man who supposedly claimed that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons program because a mere appearance of a weapons program is enough thinks about the NIE release and commotion, here is what Hashemi Rafsanjani said yesterday:

"In my view, there has been so much exaggeration about this report. It is certain that this report has no benefits for the U.S. Rather, it hurts the White House. To think that there is a conspiracy or scenario involved does not correspond to logical standards, except that the main point of this report is that Iran has stopped its policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003. This report emphasizes that there was intent but was set aside. This is not a new statement. American officials have repeated this position many times. There is nothing in the report that can be used to harm us except the claim that they have always repeated and we have always denied. The United States wanted to hide this report but if it was revealed that such report existed and the White House prevented its publication, that would have been another blow against the hawks. This report along with ElBaradei’s report has created a new atmosphere and has made the works of hawks in the United States difficult, both for increased pressure and military aggression. But the depth of their hostility has intensified and their efforts against Iran have increased. Today American and Europeans efforts for implementation of sanctions and sanctions have increased. This doesn’t mean that we should put our head under the snow and say everything has passed. We have to act with caution and deliberation.

The last sentence is obviously a dig at Ahmadinejad’s proclamation of victory after the release of the NIE. But to me what is most interesting is Hashemi Rafsanjani public rejection of the conspiratorial outlook. Given the number of phone calls I have received from family and friends in Iran regarding the NIE, I understand what Hashemi Rafsanjani is talking about. There really are many people in Iran who think the Bush and Ahmadinejad Administrations are in cahoots and whatever George Bush does is planned and intended to help strengthen Iran's hardliners. The way the NIE was released has fed those suspicions.

It is really hard to convince folks in Iran otherwise, given the reality that Bush Administration’s policies have indeed strengthened the hardliners. Read more on this article...

Reading the NIE in Tehran

Although the immediate official reaction to the release of the National Intelligence Estimate has been curiously positive, welcoming the assessment as a vindication of Iran (an “official confession” of the United States, in the words of government spokesman and justice minister Gholam-hossein Elham and “announcement of Iranian people’s victory on the nuclear issue” according to Ahmadinejad), there are signs that other important players are mulling over questions related to the timing and implications of the report. The report also seems to be feeding into the on going domestic debates about the Ahmadinejad administration’s handling of the nuclear file as well as regular political jockeying that is integral to the Iranian political landscape.

The first objection to seeing the report only in a positive light came in Tabnak, a website closely associate with the former head of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps, Mohsen Rezaie. A commentary called “The Other Side of the Coin of the NIE,” acknowledges the positive impact of the argument that Iran has not had a weapons program since 2003 but cautions about the negative aspect:

“If in our reasoning for the critique of U.S. foreign policy regarding Iran’s nuclear technology, we rely on this report in a one-sided and reckless manner, this means that we accept that the American spy agency [sic] has mastered , at least in the past seven years, its knowledge of the process of the expansion of Iran’s nuclear technology and negate the past statements of this agency which saw its hands tied in the Iran’s information and security arena and this, undoubtedly, can have very negative and unpleasant effects in the domestic developments of the country. All these things were unfortunately ignored in the official position announced on Tuesday.”

The commentary goes on the point out how the NIE effectively negates the IAEA’s long standing position that no evidence of diversion has ever been found in Iran and urges the government to approach the report with more caution and not affirm the “intelligence presence of the United States in Iran.”

In another commentary in Tabnak, the NIE’s assertion of a 2003 turnaround is discussed as a “big lie” and the point is made that no change occurred in the Iranian program in 2003. The real change, the piece argues, came in 1998-9 when there was a change of leadership at Iran’s Nuclear Energy Organization and when under this new leadership “various and dispersed activities …became focused in activities related to the fuel cycle.”

Another set of cautions came in a television interview with Ali Larijani, Iran’s nuclear negotiator who was recently relieved of his job by Ahmadinejad. Pointing out that the NIE was released at Bush’s behest, he posits the report as part and parcel of American domestic politics, pointing to the need to create credibility after the Iraq intelligence fiasco. The need to make the case that at every step, depending on the information available, the right decision is made in the US, is offered as the second reason for the release of the report while the creation of a “breathing space” and need for a push back of the “Zionist lobby’s intense war mongering” is posited as the third reason.

Finally, Larijani points out that in the NIE there are elements in line with the 5+1 position that pressure works on Iran. This leads him to say, “On this basis it can be interpreted that by the release of the report the U.S. intends to change phase in its stance regarding Iran…. ElBaradei’s recent report and clearing of most of the ambiguities placated the United States. With this report, Washington intends to affirm ElBaradei’s report and say that like ElBaradei we think Iran does not have a nuclear weapon but believe it can move in that direction in the future.”

Also, in an implicit dig against Iran’s current chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who has reportedly not been very cooperative in his meeting last week with Javier Solana, Europe’s foreign policy chief, Larijani identifies Iran, Solana, ,and ElBaradei as a triangle and sees Iran in need of cooperation with the IAEA as well as continued dialogue with Solana. Cautioning against presenting the discussions with Solana as unimportant, Larijani analogizes the situation to a “container of milk that the United States would like to overturn.”

Along the same lines, the former deputy foreign minister, Abbas Maleki, writing in Etemad-e Melli daily, acknowledges the domestic consumption of the NIE and its importance in undercutting the rush to war. He also points to the seeming confusion that plagues current US foreign policy is the Middle East. Still he states what while “American power may be in decline,” underestimating American diplomatic prowess is a mistake.

Finally, speaking to students at Ferdowsi University in Mashad, Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran’s former foreign minister and current advisor to the supreme leader, also cautions against seeing the report as positive. “We should not be too content with these types of reports. These reports, for or against Iran, have no impact on Iran’s diplomatic behavior… Of course we should see it as a good omen that our peaceful nuclear program has been vindicated and we should know that this report, like ElBaradei’s report, contains positive and negative points, hence value it on the basis of its capacity… These types of reports should be approached with doubt since more than wanting to give Iran its due; they are pursuing their own electoral interests.”

Clearly, important players of Iranian politics are more reluctant to declare the report as a victory for Iran than Ahmadinejad who has a political stake in taking credit for Iran’s aggressive policies paying off and implicitly connecting his policies to the turnaround of the American intelligence community. Read more on this article...

National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s Nuclear Program

The NIE report that just came out regarding Iran’s nuclear program will be greeted with a sigh of relief by many who have been worried about the Bush Administration hardliners’ reported push for military action against Iran.

The report judges with high confidence that Iran currently does not have a nuclear weapons program. It further states the intelligence community's lack of knowledge about Iran’s intent to develop nuclear weapons. Also, while it judges with moderate confidence that “Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame," it goes on to say "all agencies recognize the possibility that this capability many not be attained until after 2015.” Finally the report judges with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium (I assume via its planned heavy water plant in Arak) for a weapon before about 2015.

So the report should undercut (or at least dent) any legitimacy the idea of military action has had in the United States. As such, the report should be seen as part and parcel of the debate that has been going on the in the United States between promoters of coercive diplomacy and military action. And, lo and behold, it can be easily interpreted as coming down on the side of the current policy of the Bush Administration, which is coercive “diplomacy”!

It judges with “high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons” and goes on to say, “Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.”

In fact, the text issued today by the national security adviser Stephen Hadley, ends with the statement that the report “suggests the President has the right strategy, intensified international pressure along with the willingness to negotiate… The bottom line is this: for that strategy to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran – with diplomatic isolation, United Nations Sanctions, and with other financial pressure.”

This propitious convergence between the NIE and the Bush Administration’s current policy and the timing of the release of this report, which was according to a piece by Gareth Porter published on November 8 was finished a year ago, can be viewed from a couple of angles. From one angle, as mentioned above, there is the obvious rejection of Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran.

This may well be the correct angle but, from my point of view, the timing of the public revelation about the support given by the report to Bush’s current policy of sanctions, exactly at a time when some people have been questioning the futility of continuing that policy and have called for direct and unconditional talks with Iran seems, to say the least, questionable.

For the past couple of years I have come to believe that at least some of the talk about military action against Iran has been about limiting the public dialogue about Iran in the United States. By raising the specter of military action, the Bush Administration has been rather successful, at least until recently, in limiting the debate about Iran to two options: coercive “diplomacy” (sanctions) or military action.

What these two options have in common is a determination not to engage with Iran directly without preconditions (i.e. without Iran’s suspension its enrichment program before talks begin). Iran’s recent cooperation with the IAEA and its continued lack of response to the sanctions regime (in its variety of forms) has been pushing a number of people to think in terms of the need for direct talks.

In short, the fact that this NIE can so easily become an instrument in support of the Bush Administration’s current policy raises a few questions for me, including:

• What explains the timing of the release of the report?
• On what basis the report is so confident that “Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons”?
• On what basis the report judges that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program?
• Given the report’s position that the halting of Iran’s nuclear weapons program came in 2003 as a result of international pressure, but also under a reformist government, what explains the continued confidence in the halting of the program in 2007 under a government controlled by hardliners?
• Considering that the report’s focus is on the asserted impact of pressure on Iran in halting Iran’s weapons program, how does this relate to the issue at hand which is the use of pressure to halt Iran’s declared non-weapons program; a program that Iran, under reformist and hard-line governments, has refused to abandon despite extensive international pressure?

Let me end by saying that the report does contain a couple of important paragraphs that can be used by supporters of direct and unconditional talks with Iran. It states:

"Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressures indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggest that some combination of threats of intensified international security and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might – if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible – prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program… We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult… In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons."

It is noteworthy that the policy recommendations stated here focus on Iran’s weapons program and not the declared program under supervision via NPT’s safeguards agreement. This can be taken as an implied attempted shift away from halting Iran’s nuclear program to the country’s weapons program (through verification and intrusive inspections).

The reference to Iran’s cost-benefit approach as well as the requirement of taking into account Iran’s concerns regarding “security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways” can also be seen as an acknowledgment of Iran’s legitimate concerns and objectives in the region that can only be addressed in direct and unconditional talks.

Finally, the same can be said about the statement that Iran’s nuclear weapons can only be permanently halted politically. It can be argued that only direct and unconditional talks will be “perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible” and will prompt Iran to take that political decision.

But it seems highly unlikely that the Bush Administration will read the NIE in that way. Coercive “diplomacy” will continue to be the name of the game, particularly now that China has reportedly shown signs of agreeing with the next set of sanctions. Read more on this article...