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Iranapalooza

Only 18 percent of Americans are as gullible as our nation’s intelligence community. Rasmussen:

Do you believe Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program?
Yes	18%
No	66%

Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women (see crosstabs).

Interesting. Women are smarter than men.

The survey was conducted following release of a government report saying that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.

The Rasmussen Reports survey also found that 67% of American voters believe that Iran remains a threat to the national security of the United States. Only 19% disagree while 14% are not sure.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) believe that the United States should continue sanctions against Iran. Twenty percent (20%) disagree and 21% are not sure.

Forty-seven percent (47%) believe it is Very Likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons in the future and another 34% believe Iran is Somewhat Likely to do so.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of liberal voters believe that Iran has stopped its weapons program but 54% disagree.

Among conservatives, just 8% believe Iran has stopped and 81% disagree.

Another survey found that, most voters doubt the United States can count on its European allies when dealing with Iran. Just 1% of Americans view Iran as an ally of the United States. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe that Iran sponsors terrorist activities against the United States.

OK, so which percentage thinks we need to bomb the daylights out of Iran’s nuclear facilities and terrorism-supporting infrastructure? Last March, Rasmussen said 40 percent, when 75 percent of people thought Iran was likely to produce nukes soon.  Re that last number, it would appear the vast majority of Americans have not been swayed by the NIE. Fewer than 10 percent have changed their minds.

Meanwhile, Gates, former member of the intelligence community, may have got smarter since leaving. NYT: “Secretary calls Iran a Threat to Regional Security” with or without nukes.

MANAMA, Bahrain, Dec. 8 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared today that Iran is a grave threat to regional security, even without nuclear weapons, and called on Tehran to account for the full range of intelligence describing its support for terrorism and instability around the world.

Just days after Iran claimed political victory when a new American intelligence assessment found Tehran froze its nuclear program, Mr. Gates said in his keynote address to “The Manama Dialogue” that Iran could restart those efforts at any time and must come clean on its efforts to build the bomb.

…

But the most provocative section of his address was in mocking Iran’s praise of a new National Intelligence Estimate as a “watershed” – the first time Tehran accepted the conclusions of American spy agencies. As the audience chuckled, Mr. Gates said Iran’s approval of the American intelligence estimate required Iran to accept other assessments on its misbehavior.

“Since that government now acknowledges the quality of American intelligence assessments,” Mr. Gates said, “I assume that it will also embrace as valid American intelligence assessments of its funding and training of militia groups in Iraq; its deployment of lethal weapons and technology to both Iraq and Afghanistan; its ongoing support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas that have murdered thousands of innocent civilians; and its continued research and development of medium-range ballistic missiles that are not particularly cost-effective unless equipped with warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction.”

Meanwhile, Krauthammer has some more perspective on all this:

… To go nuclear, you need three things: a) the raw material, b) the ability to turn the raw material into a weapon and c) the missiles with which to deliver the weapon. Regarding a and c, Iran is proceeding with alacrity and determination on uranium enrichment (with 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges running) and on the development and testing of long-range missiles. It is the intermediate step–weaponizing the uranium into a bomb–that the intelligence estimate tells us has been suspended.

Now the caveats. First, weaponization is the most opaque of the three elements. Iran has never declared it or admitted it. Accurate information about it would be hardest to come by. Second, the logic is odd. We now believe weaponization was suspended in fall 2003, at the same time uranium enrichment was suspended. However, when uranium enrichment was resumed a few months after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s accession to power, the weaponization program (we are now told) was not.

This does not make a lot of sense. Uranium enrichment is more public and therefore more likely to bring sanctions–which, of course, it did. Why reactivate that and not the covert weaponization program–inherently a less open provocation? And why invest enormous resources on the centrifuges for enrichment and on the missiles for delivery if you’re not going to eventually weaponize?

Nonetheless, we learned from the Iraq WMD debacle that logic has a limited place in assessing the behavior of radical regimes. Saddam Hussein bluffed his way into a war that cost him his regime and his life, when he could easily have come clean regarding a WMD program he no longer had. So we must be prepared to grant that bluff and pretense may be part of the Iranian nuclear game as well.

Third, we seem to be relying on one giant and juicy piece of information that came to the U.S. this summer. President George W. Bush said it then took time to determine whether it was disinformation. One can never be sure how these double- and triple-agent mirror games are played, which might be why the NIE is only “moderately confident” it has gotten this one right.

… the critics seem not to have noticed when uranium enrichment and weaponization were halted: fall 2003–before the rise of the Iraqi insurgency and while the shock and awe of the U.S.’s three-week conquest of Baghdad was still reverberating throughout the Middle East, scaring WMD pursuers, like Gaddafi’s Libya, into giving up their nuclear programs altogether. Timing suggests that the American military option exercised in Iraq contributed to Iran’s suspension of weaponization.

 The military option may not be necessary right now. If weaponization has been suspended, the window for sanctions has been widened. But there is no reasonable argument for taking military action off the table. If the Iranians refuse to negotiate seriously–their new negotiator says all previous negotiations are void and talks now return to square one–the military option needs to be on the table and in plain view.

Topics: Iran

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:30 am on Saturday, December 8, 2007

6 Responses to “Iranapalooza”

1. PoliGazette » America’s Not Buying NIE Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 10:41 am

   [...] more at Jules Crittenden’s place. Digg this | Add to [...]

2. The Mahablog » Spoilsports Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 11:10 am

   [...] American voters believe Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons programs. The Dream (of bombing “the daylights out of Iran’s nuclear facilities and terrorism-supporting infrastructure“) is not dead! The American People are still with [...]

3. saltydog Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm

   It eases my mind to see that most of my fellow citizens haven’t lost their minds, or don’t automatically fall into step behind assessments from an organization that doesn’t have a great record for being even close to right.

4. RebeccaH Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

   How many people believe even the intelligence community “believes” Iran has stopped its nuclear program? And how many people believe this was just a political ploy by top leadership of the intelligence community?

5. saltydog Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 10:48 pm

   Nice point, Rebecca. I’d answer “me” to both.

6. Michael Lonie Says:
   December 8th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

   Maybe they stopped the weaponization part because they had developed a design by 2003 and had not yet got the U or Pu to make into a warhead. So they don’t need to work on it until they have enough fuel to make a warhead, at which point they will resume work on making such a warhead.

   They are enriching U, probably for a U bomb. We had no need to test our own U bomb, and likely neither will Iran. Their “test” may be when they drop one on Tel Aviv.

   The Iranians want nukes for genocide and imperial aggrandizement, by the statements of their own officials going back years (at least to 2001). They must be prevented from getting them to use for these purposes. Americans and Britons should remember that we are also targets for Iranian nukes. They mean to destroy our countries. Remember the lesson of the 20th Century for Jews: If someone says he means to kill you, believe him.

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