IRAN AND ITS NUCLEAR PROGRAM

• First, a review of this report.  The estimates about Iran reflect the consensus of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies.  This resulted from a combination of new intelligence and a review of old evidence, not one single piece of evidence.  The estimate did not revise earlier predictions that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by around 2015 and concluded with only “moderate confidence” that Iran has not restarted its program.  One senior intelligence expert cautioned against Iran’s ambitions being purely “benign.”  One of the major issues with Iran is that it continues to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, which it says is part of a civilian energy program.  Currently, Iran has no operating nuclear-power plant and has plenty of other fuel sources available.  Most interestingly, the International Atomic Energy Association reported recently that Iran had nearly 3,000 centrifuges operating at its Natanz nuclear facility, enough to make a nuclear weapon and an increase from 300 a year earlier.
• Second, what does this intelligence estimate say about the Bush administration?  This new judgment has undermined four years of US effort to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  The Wall Street Journal editorially observes that “this kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency.”  The result is chaos on the diplomatic front.  China is backing away from whatever support they might have provided for tougher sanctions against Iran.  Russia has concluded the same thing and will not support sanctions.  Not surprisingly, Iran calls these findings a “victory.”  It is in short a propaganda victory for Iran.
• Third, can we trust this distinction between military and civilian nuclear program?  In the NIE estimate report, the first sentence reads:  “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 other words, the NIE is talking about military weapons systems, not civilian uses of uranium or nuclear energy, which can rather easily be converted to military use.  As William J. Broad recently observed:  “The open secret of the nuclear age is that the line between civilian and military programs is extraordinarily thin.  That is why the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has teams of inspectors constantly sweeping through nuclear centers around the globe, looking for cheaters.”  Consider enriched uranium.  Enriched to low levels, uranium can fuel a reactor that produces electrical power.  This is what Iran says it is doing.  However, if uranium is purified in spinning centrifuges long enough, and becomes highly enriched, it can fuel an atom bomb.  The history of the atomic age demonstrates that for a country with an advanced civil nuclear program, crossing the line into bomb work is relatively easy.  Broad writes that “the most difficult part of building a bomb is not doing the secret military design work but rather the part of the process that is also crucial to civilian nuclear power—producing the fuel.”  For that reason, the NIE report still believes that the enriching of uranium currently going on can produce enough fuel for a weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015—a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates going back to 2003.  So, I am not certain that this NIE revision estimate is that definitive.  The threat is still there!
• Finally, as Daniel Henninger has concluded, we are still living in a most dangerous world, despite the NIE estimate about Iran.  He questions:  “Why, then, in 2006 was Iran performing test flights of the Shabab-2 and Shabab-3 ballistic missiles, the latter with a range of 1,200 miles?”  Further, the Iranian defense ministry recently announced that it has built a new 1,200-mile missile, the Ashura, and in September, it put on display the 1,100-mile range Ghadr-1 missile.  I doubt if Israel feels very secure about all this.  Perhaps that is the reason that Israel is conducting its own intelligence estimate about Iran’s nuclear program.  Further, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, indeed virtually all the nations of the Middle East are seeking nuclear-power capability.  In September Israel bombed what it believed was a nuclear bomb facility in Syria that was built in part by North Korea.  

In short, the NIE estimate about Iran and its military nuclear weapons capability is not that reassuring.  Iran continues to develop enriched uranium, which can rather easily be shifted to weapons technology.  Its missile capability continues to grow numerically and in its sophisticated capability.  I am not certain this NIE report brings much comfort.  The report has been grossly exaggerated in the media and brings little certainty that we or Israel are much safer because of this conclusion.  I see no reason to trust the Iranian government when it says it is merely developing enriched uranium for civilian use!

See Henninger’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal (6 December 2007); “Behind the Iran-Intelligence Reversal” in the Wall Street Journal (8-9 December 2007) and the editorial in the same edition; and William J. Broad in the New York Times (5 December 2007).