THE SWAG NIE

Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and probably won't be able to build a bomb before 2015 if it does restart it, a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has concluded.  That's very good news…if it's true.

But that's a BIG if.  The NIE is a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess), not a statement of proven fact. 

It's a SWAG from an Intelligence Community (IC) whose predictive record about the Middle East has been poor.  It's a SWAG that's challenged by Israeli intelligence, whose predictive history is much better.  And it's a SWAG that is diametrically opposed to the last SWAG the IC issued on Iran's nuclear program.

An IC that had "high confidence" in a 2005 NIE that Iran was building a bomb and was resistant to international pressure now has "high confidence" that Iran stopped building it two years before that NIE was issued! 

Just four months ago, Dr. Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of Analysis for the Office of National Intelligence, and one of the three principal authors of the NIE, told the House Armed Services Committee: "We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons — despite its international obligations and international pressure."

Assuming no political shenanigans (which may be a faulty assumption), what could have caused so dramatic a turnaround in so short a time?

The answer may be Gen. Ali Rez Asgari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps,  who defected to the West in February.  His debriefing, and analysis of any documents he brought with him, could well be responsible for the profound change in the IC's assessment of what's going on in Iran.

Their sources say the IC's reversal was based on notes of deliberations of Iranian military officials obtained last summer, wrote New York Times reporters David Sanger and Steven Myers today (12/06).

But what if the notes were disinformation planted to mislead us?  It was uncorroborated statements which proved to be false from an Iraqi defector ("Curveball") which were chiefly responsible for the IC's (apparently) erroneous conclusions about Saddam's WMD.

The notes and deliberations were corroborated by other intelligence, including intercepted telephone conversations among Iranian officials, sources told the New York Times.

Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's leading hawk on Iran, pronounced himself satisfied with the NIE.  "I think they've done the best job they can with the intelligence that's available," he said in an interview Wednesday.

But the Israelis are skeptical.  "The noise that was heard last night in Tehran, according to credible reports, was a hearty Persian laugh," wrote Amir Oren in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz the day after the NIE's conclusions were made public.  "The document's eight pages…enable the Ayatollahs' nuclear and operations officials…to reach this soothing conclusion: the Americans have no understanding of what is really happening in Iran's nuclear program."

Mossad agrees Iran did suspend its nuclear program for a time in 2003, but believes the mullahs subsequently restarted it, and will have the bomb by the end of 2009.

Democrats, who try to fashion every international and domestic development into a club with which to beat President Bush, claim the NIE undermines the administration's policy towards Iran.  But if the NIE is accurate, the opposite is the case — which may explain Mr. Cheney's contentment with it.

The NIE said Iran's decision to suspend its nuclear weapons program was "primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work."

The UN didn't impose sanctions on Iran until last year.  Can you think of an event in 2003 that might have made the mullahs nervous?

Libya's Muammar Qaddaffi, who abandoned his nuclear weapons program that year, can.  He told then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."

"Critics of President Bush cannot simultaneously believe that the current NIE is accurate while continuing to assert that Bush's policies towards Iran have been disastrous," wrote Philip Klein in the American Spectator.  "Anybody who takes the report at face value would have to conclude, conversely, that the administration's nonproliferation efforts have been a smashing success."