NIE: 'Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.'

On October 21, in a speech to the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that the risk of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons was beyond dispute.

The Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power is a matter of record. And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.

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The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

As with Cheney's unequivocal declarations on the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, his hysterical warnings about Iran are revealed to be without substance.

The 16 American spy agencies whose assesments make up the National Intelligence Estimate have knocked down definitively the main plank of the Bush administration's case for a military strike against Iran.

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program 1; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

The expression "high confidence" is a term of art indicating the degree of certitude with which assesments are made.

Confidence in Assessments. Our assessments and estimates are supported by information that varies in scope, quality and sourcing. Consequently, we ascribe high, moderate, or low levels of confidence to our assessments, as follows:

• High confidence generally indicates that our judgments are based on high-quality information, and/or that the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid judgment [emphasis added]. A “high confidence” judgment is not a fact or a certainty, however, and such judgments still carry a risk of being wrong.

• Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.

• Low confidence generally means that the information’s credibility and/or plausibility is questionable, or that the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or that we have significant concerns or problems with the sources.

While the NIE notes with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran is keeping its nuclear options "open," it is the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that the Iranians' determination to acquire nuclear weapons has waned.

Another major tactic in the Bush administration's p.r. campaign for a military strike is the suggestion that the Iranians are madmen who cannot be reasoned with. The NIE definitively disputes this idea.

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. 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.

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Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure 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, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny 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. It is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.

In other words, the government of Iran is not run by psychopaths. It is run by rational human beings who are capable of understanding the consequences of their decisions, and of acting accordingly.

Of course, if the Bush administration continues to threaten Iran with regime change, its government could very well decide that restarting a nuclear weapons program is in its interest. In fact, Bush and Cheney's beligerence could very well be geared toward just such a self-fulfilling prophecy.