The Gift that Keeps on Giving

From Iran’s perspective, the recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on its nuclear program is the proverbial report that keeps on giving. That assessment—which concluded that Tehran “suspended” portions of its nuclear program in 2003—has made it all-but-impossible for President Bush to take action against Iran in the waning months of his administration. As a result, any decision on Iran will likely be deferred until 2009, at the earliest.

And Tehran is making the most of its opportunity. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released an uncharacteristically blunt report on Monday, noting that Iran still owes the organization a “substantial explanation” about its nuclear activities. According to the U.N. agency, Tehran’s suspected research into nuclear weapons remains a “matter of serious concerns.”

As The New York Times reports:

The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation.

Part of the agency’s case hinges on 18 documents listed in the report and presented to Iran that, according to Western intelligence agencies, indicate the Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing and a missile warhead design — activities that could be associated with constructing nuclear weapons.

“There are certain parts of their nuclear program where the military seems to have played a role,” said one senior official close to the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic constraints. He added, “We want to understand why.”

The IAEA's criticism of Iran is rather striking, given its past ignorance (or tolerance) of WMD programs in other rogue states. As former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay told the Times:

“The Iranians are certainly being confronted with some pretty strong evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and they are being petulant and defensive,” said Albright, who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security. “The report lays out what the agency knows, and it is very damning. I’ve never seen it laid out quite like this.”

Among its findings, the IAEA describes Iran’s recent efforts to install larger, more efficient centrifuges, used to enrich uranium. Agency experts report that Tehran has installed second and third-generation centrifuges (described as IR-2 and IR-3) at its Natanz processing facility. As you might expect, the Iranians never reported that advance to the IAEA.

Additionally, agency inspectors report they were denied access to centrifuge component production facilities and an enrichment research center during their most recent visit to Iran, which occurred in April.

The amount of enriched uranium being produced by Tehran remains a mystery. While the IAEA report doesn’t address that topic, an official who spoke with the NYT said Iran has produced 330 kilograms of the material (roughly 700 pounds) since December—double the amount produced during a similar span in 2006.

However, the Times’ account fails to address critical aspects of the enrichment program, including: (a) the number of advanced centrifuges have been installed; (b) the size of the Iranian cascade (or centrifuge array) and (c) the purity of the enriched uranium now being produced.

Obviously, Tehran has succeeded in expanding its production capabilities, but the purity issue is critical. Bomb-grade enriched uranium requires a purity level of more than 90%; by comparison, nuclear power reactors can utilize material with purity levels below 10%. At last report, Iran’s enriched uranium had not reached the required purity threshold, but as with other elements of its nuclear program, attaining that goal is simply a matter of time and effort.

The IAEA Board of Governors is expected to discuss the Iran report next week. Beyond that, it’s unclear what the organization might recommend to the U.N. Past sanctions and resolutions against Iran have been utter failures. And that's a charitable assessment.

Ditto for previous rounds of talks between Tehran and the European Union. But that hasn’t deterred the EU. After the latest IAEA report was unveiled, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced plans to go back to Tehran with a “repackaged” set of security, technological and political guarantees, in exchange for Iran—if it abandons its enrichment program.

That proposal, first offered to Iran in 2006, appears to be dead on arrival. Tehran has already announced that it will not give up its enrichment program, which it describes as a “red line” issue.

Iran’s increasingly tough stand should come as no surprise. Last year’s NIE effectively derailed military options against Tehran, claiming the regime that had suspended its weaponization efforts--while acknowledging that work continued on the critical tasks of uranium enrichment and ballistic missile development.

With publication of the intelligence estimate, the Bush Administration apparently abandoned efforts to make a case for military action against Iran. While there have been periodic reports of “planning” for contingency operations against Tehran, these efforts appear to be routine. Additionally, there have been no signs that the Pentagon is preparing to deploy the forces needed for a sustained air and naval campaign against the Iranians.

Meanwhile, Iran is making nuclear hay while the sun shines. Israeli intelligence has warned that Tehran could have its first nuclear device within two years, and the accelerated efforts outlined in the IAEA report lends some credence to that assessment. In any event, it appears that Iran will have nuclear weapons long before the 2015 timeline offered by the U.S. intelligence community.

And that means the next president will face difficult choices on Iran, very early in his (or her) administration. And that’s all the more reason to wonder about candidates who want to negotiate with the Iranian leadership. The recent rounds of talks—supported by the U.S.—have brought us to the verge of a nuclear-armed Iran. We can only imagine what future negotiations might bring.

There's plenty of blame to go around in the west's failure to deal effectively with Iran. But part of that blame lies with our politicized intelligence community, which put partisan battles ahead of cogent assessments. Their flawed NIE that was the analytical equivalent of kicking the can down the road. Our day of reckoning with Iran wasn't deterred--it was merely delayed. And we will face a more dangerous adversary when that day arrives.

Today's Reading Assignment

Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin, writing in the WSJ, on the real agenda of Mohammed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A few particularly salient paragraphs:

Mr. ElBaradei's [latest] report [on Iran's nuclear program] culminates a career of freelancing and fecklessness which has crippled the reputation of the organization he directs. He has used his Nobel Prize to cultivate an image of a technocratic lawyer interested in peace and justice and above politics. In reality, he is a deeply political figure, animated by antipathy for the West and for Israel on what has increasingly become a single-minded crusade to rescue favored regimes from charges of proliferation.

Mr. ElBaradei assumed the directorship on Dec. 1, 1997. On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world.

In 2003, Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi confessed to an undetected weapons effort. Mr. ElBaradei's response? He rebuked the U.S. and U.K. for bypassing him. When Israel recently destroyed what many believe was a secret (also undetected) nuclear facility in Syria, Mr. ElBaradei told the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh that it is "unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility," although his agency has not physically investigated the site.

[snip]

IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the director's political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal, an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran's refusal to grant IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to test and produce nuclear weapons.

At various times over the past decade, the U.S. has tried to get ElBaradei fired from his post, for obvious reasons. Now is the time to renew that effort.

The Van Diepen Demarche

Today's New York Sun has an insightful editorial on the problems with the recently-declassified NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Reading between the lines of the document (as we have) the Sun finds it lacking in several respects.

For starters, one of the estimate's primary authors, Vann Van Diepen, seems to be less-than-objective on the issue. According to the Sun:

"Vann Van Diepen...has spent the last five years trying to get America to accept Iran's right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war."

If that account is accurate, then it raises serious questions about the NIE's ultimate conclusion, since a "frozen" weapons program dovetails nicely with Mr. Van Diepen's position on Iran's enrichment efforts. Obviously, all analysts are subject to personal bias (to some degree), but you've got to wonder how someone with Van Diepen's agenda was assigned to the NIE team. Oh, that's right. He (reportedly) works for the CIA. And we know how elements of that agency feel about the Bush Administration and its policies toward certain countries, including Iran.

The Sun also observes that it's hard to believe that Iran would halt its nuclear weapons program--an effort that has been sustained for decades, despite increasingly international pressure. The estimate also assigns a degree of rationality to Tehran's nuclear decision-making, a quality noticeably absent in other Iranian programs and policies.

Indeed, why would a nation that denies the holocaust and advocates "wiping Israel off the map" suddenly bow to sanctions and pressure that were anything-but-draconian? Then, there's the issue of how much progress Iran made before the program was supposedly frozen, and the related matter of a possible, covert development program. Lest we forget, North Korea supposedly "gave up" its nuclear program in 1994 under the infamous "Agreed To Framework," but simply its developments underground, and produced an unknown number of nuclear devices over the years that followed.

On a similar note, Michael Ledeen (writing at NRO) notes that, "for the NIE to be true, the evidence would have to be awfully good. And evidence of that quality has been in famously short supply. We would add that detailed insights--and amplifying, hard-copy information--from General Asgari might remedy some of those concerns. However, we must add that the reliability of an intel source is validated over time, and through corroboration by other sources. Asgari defected less than a year ago, and (as we noted in the previous post), confirming some of his claims may be difficult, unless we have similar, high-level sources still in place.

Mr. Ledeen is also adept at spotting some of the "spook-speak" and weasel words that invariably qualify any intelligence estimate. At one point, the NIE states that Iran has a "latent" goal to develop nuclear weapons (they're just not doing it right now). And, in the estimate's key judgments, the analysts say that, it's likely that Iran will eventually develop nuclear weapons, perhaps in the 2010-2015 time frame. Apparently, the State Department "took a footnote" on that one, deviating slightly with the "consensus" and stating that development will not occur until after 2013. How they arrived at that conclusion is not explained in the document's declassified version.

Ledeen reminds us that we've been fooled on nuclear programs before, and Iran may be deceiving us now. We would add that Tehran's deception program isn't as advanced as Russia, North Korea or Pakistan, but then again, concealing a covert nuclear program doesn't take a lot of work. Key processes--including uranium enrichment--can be hidden in small, nondescript buildings like a warehouse, with no external indicators or signatures. And quite predictably, the NIE (renamed the Van Diepen Demarche by the Sun), refuses to rule out the possibility of a convert development effort, or the acquisition of fissile material or finished weapons, from external sources.

As with many NIEs, this one raises more questions than it answers. And remember: this document will be a cornerstone of U.S. policy-making toward Iran for at least the next two years, possibly longer. The potential consequences of "getting it wrong" are very grave, to say the least.

Changing the Assessment on Iran

Official Washington and the chattering class are abuzz over the recently-declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which assesses that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program three years ago.

The latest NIE on Tehran's nuclear efforts--released only one day before a scheduled Presidential news conference--declares with "high confidence" that the Iranian weapons program remains on hold. The assessment also says with "high confidence" that the pause was "directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."

As the International Herald-Tribune reports (from a NYT article):

The estimate does not say when American intelligence agencies learned that the weapons program had been halted, but a statement issued by Donald Kerr, the principal director of national intelligence, said the document was being made public "since our understanding of Iran's capabilities has changed."

Rather than painting Iran as a rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with the bomb, the estimate states that Iran's "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.

The latest assessment comes two years after the last NIE on Iran's nuclear ambitions, which stated that Tehran was working "inexorably" toward obtaining a nuclear bomb. And, the new intelligence estimate was released only weeks after President Bush and Vice-President Cheney warned of grave consequences if the Iranian government didn't abandon its weapons program.

So, why the stunning reversal?

The answer probably lies in a single name: General Ali Rez Asgari.

General Asgari is the former Deputy Iranian Defense Minister and Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander who defected to the west earlier this year. Asgari is the highest-ranking Iranian military defector in decades; it is widely believed that he has detailed knowledge of Tehran's most sensitive operations, including its sponsorship of Hizballah, and information on Iran's nuclear program.

While General Asgari retired from active duty several years ago, he remained a key player in military and political matters. At the time of his defection, Asgari was on an "official" trip to Syria, for discussions on matters of mutual interest, including upcoming weapons deliveries by Russia, and continued support for Hizballah.

But Asgari never made it to Damascus; he disappeared during a stopover in Turkey and was spirited out of the country by the CIA or the Mossad, with likely assistance from Ankara's intelligence services. In a colossal display of ineptitude, Iranian counter-intelligence officers missed signs of the planned defection. General Asgari sold his home in Tehran last year, and his family joined him on the Syria trip, allowing them to escape as well.

Since his defection, Asgari has reportedly been sheltered in CIA safe houses in the U.S., where he has undergone extensive debriefing. Information supplied by Asgari allowed American intel services to check their information against the defector's account. The (apparent) result is a vastly different picture of Iran's nuclear program than the one offered by the intelligence community just two years ago.

Indeed, the dramatic change in assessments could be viewed as another, damning indictment of our intel services. Reading between the lines of the 2005 and 2007 NIEs, it seems likely that the first estimate was based almost entirely on national technical collection. Information gathered by overhead platforms and other high-tech sensors suggested that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

However, the earlier estimate apparently lacked an important detail--corroboration by human intelligence (HUMINT) sources--insiders who could "fill in the details" on the Iranian effort and its long-range goals. Sad to say, but the new estimate suggests that western intelligence never had a credible source at the highest levels of the Iranian government until Asgari defected (emphasis mine).

Information from the general's debriefs provided fresh data for U.S. analysts, allowing them to compare his information with that obtained from other sources. And, apparently, his information suggested that our intelligence services had missed the mark (again).

Officially, no one in the intelligence community has identified Asgari as the source for the "new" information that prompted the revised assessment. Mr. Kerr's claim that "our understanding has changed" is little more than tacit acknowledgment of new information--or, more correctly a new source with information that was previously unavailable and cannot be refuted (so far). General Asgari certainly fits the profile for that type of source.

If we assume that the defector provided much of the information behind the new assessment, that will raise inevitable questions about his veracity--and the possibility that Asgari is some sort of double-agent. In fairness, we should note that intel agencies (principally, the CIA) work very hard at establishing the reliability of defectors and their information. At a minimum, Asgari would have been subjected to multiple polygraphs and a series of exhaustive debriefings that covered key points over and over again. So far, Asgari's accounts seem to be standing up to scrutiny.

But even Asgari's cross-checked claims might not be enough to prompt that a major reversal of an NIE. That's why we believe that the general brought much more out of Iran than his personal recollections and memories. In his posts as IRGC Commander and Deputy Defense Minister, Asgari was in a position to access classified information on Iranian programs and policies across the political-military spectrum. We're guessing that scores of letters, e-mails, memoranda, spreadsheets and other documents were saved by Asgari, and have been turned over to the CIA. Analysis of that material, coupled with the general's own personal account, was enough to force a change in the NIE.

While the assessment casts a different light on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, it does not give Iran a clean bill of health. The report notes that Iran is still enriching uranium, and could still develop a bomb between 2010-2015, if it so chooses. Also disturbing--at least from the intelligence perspective--we still don't know all the reasons behind Iran's apparent decision to freeze its program, or what might trigger its resumption. That reminds us that there are limits to any source's knowledge, and once they defect, the information becomes dated.

Bottom line: there are still serious gaps in what we know about Iran's nuclear program. According to the AP, the CIA (which leads development of most NIEs) considered at least six alternatives to explain the freeze, including the possibility that the halt is nothing more than a ruse. Some of the other scenarios may have included an "outsourcing" of Tehran's weapons program (a claim that is partially supported by Israel's discovery--and bombing of a nuclear facility in Syria), and the possibility that Iran planned to buy finished weapons from another source, perhaps North Korea.

While some Congressional Democrats praised the "independence" of the new NIE, the report is also evidence of the continuing war between the CIA and the White House. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were briefed on the new assessment (and its conclusions) last week, but interim reports on the Asgari debriefing were available for months--almost from the day he defected. It would be interesting to know how much of this information (if any) was included in the daily intelligence briefings for the President and Vice-President, given their frequent comments on Iran's nuclear program.

If President Bush and Vice-President Cheney ignored early "warnings" from Asgari's debriefings, shame on them. But, given the long-running hostilities between the CIA and the White House, it is possible that much of the data from the debrief and the NIE formulation process was suppressed until the assessment was complete.

How could that happen? It's quite simple, really. Bury the defector reports in routine HUMINT reporting, or simply withhold the biggest "bombshells" for the NIE. Remember: the intel community is responsible for determining what is briefed to the president and members of his senior staff. By sitting on information (as part of the NIE preparation process), or parceling out information in normal HUMINT reporting, anti-Bush factions in various intel agencies could pull another "gotcha" on the Commander-in-Chief, forcing him to rely on the 2005 NIE as the basis for his remarks on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Bush is expected to field a lot of questions on the intel assessment at today's news conference. The MSM won't pose these queries, but they should be asked, nonetheless:

--"Mr. President, when were you first briefed on General Asgari, and how many updates have you received since his defection?

--"In updates provided on the defection, were you ever briefed on new information regarding Iran's nuclear program? When did you first receive that information?

--"Considering the disparity between your remarks on Iran's nuclear ambitions--and the information in the NIE--do you believe the intelligence community withheld information from the White House, or downplayed the significance of recently-acquired information?

The answers to those questions would probably confirm our worst suspicions--relations between the administration and the CIA are as bad as ever, and unlikely to change until the next president takes office.

And, for what it's worth, we would not want to be in General Hayden or Admiral McConnell's shoes this morning.

The Day After

An Arrow 2 missile, designed (and deployed) primarily to protect Israeli from attack by medium and intermediate range Iranian missiles (Israeli Aircraft Industries photo via The Jerusalem Post)

A Reuters dispatch out of Israel indicates that the Olmert government is preparing for "The Day After"--the possibility that deterrence efforts will fail, and Iran will acquire nuclear weapons.

According to the report, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed his ministers to draft proposals on how to cope with a nuclear Iran.

The report was later denied by a senior Prime Minister's Office official, Israel Radio reported.

The agency quoted a source close to Olmert as saying there were "long-term ramifications to be addressed, like how to maintain our deterrent and military response capabilities, or how to off-set the attrition on Israeli society that would be generated by fear of Iranian nukes."

Despite the official denials, cabinet member Ami Ayalon told Reuters there is a need for a three-point strategy against Iran:

"First, we must make clear that this is a threat not just to Israel, but to the wider world. Second, we must exhaustively consider all preventive options. And third, we must anticipate the possibility of those options not working," Ayalon said.

Reaction to the story has been decidedly mixed. Some in the blogosphere have claimed that Mr. Olmert is "selling Israel down the drain," concluding that a nuclear-armed Iran is all-but-inevitable.

Other pundits believe that the Israeli government is simply being prudent. The international community has consistently refused to take more decisive action against Iran (and its nuclear program), and there's no guarantee that military action would completely eliminate the threat. Under that scenario, Israel could very well face a nuclear-capable Iran at some point in the very near future.

Reading between the lines, we believe the Israeli comments reflect a number of considerations, and they're aimed at both domestic and American audiences. First, the statement is an indirect admission that there are limits on Israel's ability to strike Iran. As we've noted in the past, the IAF is constrained by its ability to provide in-flight refueling for an air strike against Iran, and the need to cross hostile airspace.

Given those limitations, an IAF attack would likely be a "one-time" operation, involving a relatively limited number of F-16Is, F-15Is and KC-707s (with probably no more than 24 strike aircraft). That means elements of Iran's nuclear program might escape serious damage, and could be quickly reconstituted. The problem is further exacerbated by the possibility that Tehran has a parallel, covert nuclear effort, in locations unknown to Israeli or western intelligence.

That's why the Israelis would prefer that the U.S. take military action against Iran. American carriers in the Gulf--and Air Force expeditionary winds based in the Middle East--could launch a sustained aerial bombardment of Tehran's key military and nuclear facilities, reducing survival prospects for key installations, equipment and personnel.

But that creates serious problems for Washington, both politically and militarily. On the political side, there are concerns that an attack against Iran would completely destroy GOP prospects for retaining the White House in 2008. While President Bush's decision-making has never been controlled by polls and electoral concerns, he is not oblivious to the political ramifications of attacking Iran.

Additionally, a number of senior U.S. military officials have recently noted that a "new front" against Iran would place a further strain on our armed forces, already stretched-thin by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. While none of those officials have stated that we lack the capability to attack Iran, they have cautioned that expanded operations would come at a very high price, particularly in terms of money and equipment.

And, if Mr. Bush takes a pass on striking Iran before his term ends, then it's all-but-certain that a Democratic successor would also refrain from military action. That's why those Israeli comments (conveniently offered to a Reuters correspondent) are also aimed at Democratic presidential hopefuls. Tel Aviv has no confidence in the willingness of a Democratic administration to deal forcefully with Tehran--and those concerns are well-founded. Not long ago, one of the party's leading presidential hopefuls suggested that he would be willing to talk with Ahmadinejad, the same man who has suggested that Israel should be "wiped off" the map.

With their own military options constrained--and the U.S. seemingly unable to act, it's no wonder that Israel is growing increasingly pessimistic in its outlook. With the world community unwilling to aggressively confront Iran, and with limited military possibilities, planning for "The Day After" may become Israeli state policy by default.