BICOM

The US National Intelligence Estimate issued last week appeared to contradict an earlier estimate by the same 16 bodies which together make up the US intelligence community. The NIE of 2005 claimed with ‘high confidence’ that Iran was ‘determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.’ The 2007 NIE reverses this assessment, estimating with similar ‘high confidence’ that in ‘the fall of 2003, Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme.'[i]

The conclusions of the new estimate are being met with increased scepticism by experts in both the UK and Israel. In the notoriously difficult and inaccurate field of real-time intelligence, there is a growing sense that the 2007 estimate may have been based on a faulty reading of available information, and a misguided reading of Iranian intentions. The discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue – perhaps the key international issue of the current period – is passing increasingly into the public domain in the US, Israel and the UK. This document will focus first on the doubts that are emerging regarding the new estimate – in all three countries – and will then consider the wider background to the report which may explain some of the differing interpretations.

NIE 2007 estimate: growing doubts

In 2003, Iran agreed to halt its uranium enrichment programme in response to international pressure, and signed an ‘additional protocol’ which afforded greater rights to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) At this point, the recent NIE report assumes that Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons ceased, and any undiscovered elements were likely also to have been halted.[ii]

But with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of Iran in 2005, Iran’s overt uranium enrichment programme was unilaterally re-commenced, and has since increased in scope.[iii] It is thus unclear as to why the NIE assessment, which does not deny Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, assumes that at the point when uranium enrichment re-commenced, this was not part of a more general re-launching of the nuclear weapons drive that was temporarily frozen in 2003.[iv]

In this regard, it is crucial to reiterate that uranium enrichment, of the type now undertaken by Iran at its Natanz plant, may be used for both civil and military purposes. Uranium enriched to 4.5% purity is used for the generation of electricity for civil purposes. Uranium enriched to 87.5% or more may be used in the assembling of a nuclear weapon.[v] Iran has claimed throughout that its uranium enrichment programme is intended for the purpose of generating electricity for civil purposes. Given Iran’s rich endowment in oil and natural gas, it has never been clearly explained why Iran would choose this more difficult and complex method of generating electricity.

It is accepted that should Iran succeed in constructing a 3,000 centrifuge cascade at Natanz, this would be sufficient to then produce adequate highly-enriched uranium for the production of nuclear bombs.[vi] Iran has claimed that it has already constructed a 3,000 centrifuge cascade, while denying that its purpose is to produce nuclear weapons.

The undeniable fact of uranium enrichment of a dual-use capability, combined with Iran’s investment in missile technology and its development of the Shihab-4 and Shihab-5 ballistic missiles, appears to indicate a likely prognosis that Iran is engaged in an attempt to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. No ‘smoking gun’ evidence exists to confirm the presence of the third necessary aspect in producing a nuclear weapons capability – namely, a programme to connect nuclear capability and missile capability through a weaponisation programme. The issue of Iranian intentions therefore becomes crucial. Israel considers it likely that Iran is maintaining a secret additional weaponisation programme, which would enable the rapid production of a nuclear weapon once the ability to enrich uranium to the necessary level has been mastered. Some experts consider that the Iranian intention is to build the capacity for the construction of a nuclear weapon, but not to actually construct a weapon.[vii]

The NIE estimate of 2007 accepts the existence of the uranium enrichment and missile development programmes. It accepts the likelihood of an Iranian strategic goal of a nuclear weapons capability. It also puts the likely date by which the Iranians may achieve such a capability between 2010 and 2015. In all these respects, the estimate is not far from Israeli analyses – such as that of Military Intelligence head of Research Yossi Baidatz, which place 2009 as the year in which the Iranians are likely to pass the point of no return in terms of the ability to build a nuclear weapon. But the 2007 NIE concludes that at the present time it is highly unlikely that Iran is engaged in a weaponisation programme (although it accepts the existence of such a programme before 2003).

It appears that the basis for this latter claim is the interception of conversations by Iranian nuclear staff, along with the evidence given by Iranian defectors. A report in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph quoted un-named British intelligence officials as considering that US agencies may well have fallen victim to an elaborate Iranian campaign of misinformation designed to throw the international community off the scent.[viii]

The official said that ‘They say things on the phone because they know we are on the phones. They say black is white. They will say anything to throw us off.[ix] Israeli officials share the view that the NIE report appears to draw broad, sweeping conclusions based on ignoring the presence of the uranium enrichment and missile development programmes, and that it bases its claim that no weaponisation programme exists on what appears to be less than conclusive evidence.[x]

Doubts regarding the report are already growing in the US. Editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times have questioned its findings. Again, the criticism has centred on the report’s down-playing of the significance of Iranian enrichment efforts. Rep. Brad Sherman (D), Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Trade, also stressed in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday, that the NIE report’s downplaying of the significance of uranium enrichment in Natanz casts serious doubt on its findings.[xi]

British officials, who are in the process of seeking a third sanctions resolution against Iran, were similarly dismayed by the report, on similar grounds. Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Sky News yesterday that “The intelligence estimate that came out this week talked about the weaponisation part of nuclear weapons programmes – one of three parts…There are two other critical parts to a nuclear weapons programme – the enrichment, which we know is going on because they boast about it, and secondly the missile testing.” He added that the UK’s position regarding a third sanctions resolution remains unchanged by the report.[xii]

What lies behind the report?

When the NIE Assessment was released last week, there was initial speculation that it represented a salvo in the larger bureaucratic conflict in Washington which pits Vice President Dick Cheney against Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Cheney has been more associated with a ‘hawkish’ view regarding Iran, and it was assumed that the report may have reflected the views of Gates or Rice, who are seen as taking a more accommodating view. Evidence which has emerged in the last days, however, casts doubt on such an interpretation. Secretary Gates, speaking in Bahrain yesterday, called for intensified pressure on Iran, and stressed that the NIE report ‘is explicit that Iran is keeping its options open and could restart its nuclear weapons programme at any time – if it has not done so already.’ He went on to slam what he termed the Iranian regional strategy of fomenting ‘instability and chaos – regardless of the cost.'[xiii]

Secretary Gates’s latest statements appear to indicate that the NIE estimate may presage a major shift in US policy on Iran – though the impact of the report is undoubtedly to make the building of an effective international coalition against Iranian nuclear ambitions more complex. Bringing China and Russia on board for a third round of sanctions, for example, has clearly been complicated by the report.

But in the US, Israel and the UK the report is increasingly being seen as the product of an ultra-cautious attitude on the part of the US intelligence community following its failures to accurately assess the true state of Iraq’s programme of weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 war. The US intelligence community similarly found itself caught unawares on the issue of the AQ Khan network, that of the Libyan WMD programme. It is too soon to draw clear parameters for the likely influence of the 2007 NIE Report. But there are already indications that given the scepticism toward its central conclusions already emerging from the British and Israeli intelligence communities, and from key US policymakers it may not succeed in significantly re-framing the discussion on Iranian nuclear ambitions, which remain a central and urgent issue for US, UK and Israeli policymakers alike.

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[i] Aaron Klein, ‘Israel: Forget US Intel, Iran nukes at full speed,’ World Net Daily, 10 December 2007. http://www.wnd.com/

[ii] David Blair, ‘Iran has halted nuclear weapons programme,’ Daily Telegraph, 3 December 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Charles Krauthammer, ‘Keep up the pressure,’ Time, 6 December 2007. http://www.time.com/

[v] Blair.

[vi] ‘The facts about Iranian nuclear enrichment,’ http://www.thinkprogress.org/

[vii] Amir Taheri, ‘Rough Estimate,’ New York Post, 8 December 2007. http://www.nypost.com/

[viii] Tim Shipman, Philip Sherwell and Carolyne Wheeler, ‘Iran ‘hoodwinked’ CIA over nuclear plans,’ Sunday Telegraph, 9 December 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ari Rabinovitch, ‘Israel says Iran could have nuclear bomb by 2010,’ Washington Post, 9 December 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/

[xi] Shmuel Rosner and Barak Ravid, ‘PM: Israel will work to expose Iran nuclear programme,’ Haaretz, 10 December 2007. http://www.haaretz.com/ See also Peter Hoekstra and Jane Harman, ‘The Limits of Intelligence,’ Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2007. http://www.wsj.com/

[xii] Ibid. See also David Miliband, ‘Why we must not take the pressure off Iran,’ Financial Times, 6 December 2007. http://www.ft.com/

[xiii] Simon Tisdall, ‘Iran remains potential threat, Gates warns,’ Guardian, 10 December 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/