American Misconception
Raises threat of war, Israeli public security minister says. Arab News:
RAMALLAH, West Bank, 16 December 2007 — Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter yesterday criticized the United States over its recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program saying that “American misconception concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons, which is liable to lead to a regional Yom Kippur (the October 1973 War) where Israel will be among the countries that are threatened.”
Dichter bemoaned what he views as Israel’s inability to impress upon Washington just how imminent the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons is. “The softened intelligence report proves that Israel failed to provide the Americans with the whole picture concerning the Iranian nuclear threat,” the Israeli Radio cited him saying.
He said the report does not reflect the severity of the Iranian threat and urged Israel and other countries to supply the US with new information and intelligence assessments. “We have to hope that the US will know to correct this. Israel and other states must help in any way including providing intelligence material so as to fix this miscalculation.”
“A misconception by the world’s leading superpower is not just an internal American occurrence,” Dichter said. “This has to bother Israel and many other countries.” However, the public security minister went on to say the US was a “powerful country” that conducts its affairs in a “logical manner” and, therefore, if Israel manages to convince it that Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program, this will have a major influence on the Americans.
Arab News had a little more sense of urgency than the Reuters and AP reports. Maybe because as neighbors, they have a clearer view across the Gulf.
Former Shin Bet chief Dichter says Israel failed to make the point. Reuters:
“We need to admit that Israel did not succeed in convincing the U.S.-leadership on the fact that an Iranian (nuclear) weapon threat is immediate and significant,” Dichter, a former director of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, said in a speech near Tel Aviv.
“It seems that what we put before them, how we presented it, wasn’t persuasive enough,” he said. “It’s important for Israel to keep trying to convince with facts and intelligence data.”
Nice of Dichter, not to place blame on the American intelligence community for the NIE. You’ll recall some Americans are not so charitable.
Some other views:
Iran, force for peace. Rassul Movahedian, Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Tehran Times:
… the U-turn on Iran by U.S. spy agencies — the biggest since the Iraq debacle five years ago — was not a surprise for Iranians as it was in the United States or for America’s allies. This is an important move if the Americans now adjust their official stance to concrete realities, as it will help rectify feverish speculation. It is good for the American people, for America’s allies, and for the rest of the world, as it diminishes the threat to peace and security. We, on our part, welcome this trend.
The Americans were at least brave enough to present their assessment to the public. This is a sensible act, because issues related to war and peace cannot be decided in the shadows, behind closed doors. In this respect, the time is also ripe for U.S. allies in Europe, especially those who have their own independent analysis, to publicize their assessments. We expect the British government to let the public know its findings. London can contribute significantly to international peace and stability, as well as its own interests. This can be looked at as an opportunity.
The national intelligence estimate was an effort, above all, to reconcile American findings with international reports, particularly those presented by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the sole international and legal body for verification. The assessment did not introduce any new material. And while we cannot agree with the content and further ambiguities created by the report, it could be considered, with some amendments, as a step towards further openness in regional and international cooperation, if the reality, which is the right of Iran to develop peaceful nuclear technology, is acknowledged.
As I wrote in the Guardian earlier this year (Comment, February 22), Iran is a force for peace. On the threshold of the new year, this remains the case.
Letting Iran off the hook. Gulf News:
What just happened? Out of the blue, Iran was let off the hook by none other than its accuser’s spy arm; 16 US intelligence agencies to be precise. To say that such bombshell exoneration was nothing less than a slap in the face of the Bush administration is an understatement.
Tongue-in-cheek notwithstanding, what was building into a major political and military tsunami has suddenly and unexpectedly been demoted to a harmless storm in a tea cup!
Iran has every reason to celebrate. So does Mohammad Al Baradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which for months has downplayed the alleged threat of Tehran’s nuclear programme.
So far so good. Hang on …
While Iran was pleading its innocence, the Bush administration, along with some of its close European allies, was busy building up a case against the Iranian programme. Time was running out for a diplomatic solution and the clouds of war were gathering quickly.
But now we can breathe easily because the pundits of the Washington inner circle agree: The Bush team has been trumped. Barring an unexpected provocation in the Gulf, the US no longer has an excuse to launch a military strike against its bitter enemy.
To get an alibi from such a surprise star witness is something that even the most experienced analysts did not expect. But it happened and some observers likened it to a coup inside the Bush house.
The affair raises yet more questions on the integrity of the current administration, at a time when its policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are being questioned by presidential hopefuls and indeed by a majority of Americans.
With the Dick Cheney war mongers on the defensive, it is safe to assume that the chances of new hostilities erupting in the final few months of the Bush presidency have greatly diminished.
What was that I said about Arabs with a clear view?
It is now up to the IAEA to ensure that Iran’s efforts to develop a civilian nuclear energy programme remain within that scope. The outcome of the Iran affair will help other countries that now seek alternatives to hydrocarbons such as Jordan, Egypt and the UAE.
Ensure?
The Iranian case must remain transparent and accessible, and the IAEA must get the international support that it needs to stay in control.
Remain?
On the other hand, now that Tehran has been acquitted of charges of seeking to build a military nuclear programme, its neighbours, among others, should pursue efforts to engage its leadership in serious dialogue.
Acquitted?
Here’s someone who suggests history will damn George Bush for missing an opportunity with Iran, but he doesn’t intend to wait. It’s a circular argument that holds the U.S. intelligence community can’t be trusted, but given its conclusions, the Iranians should have been. At least, I think that’s what Pat Buchanan is saying here:
The White House campaign to stampede this nation into war, to smash Iran’s nuclear facilities before she acquires the capability to build an atom bomb, has been derailed, probably for the duration of the Bush presidency.
…
To have the intelligence community make a public declaration that undermines the foreign policy of a president, even as it calls his credibility into question, is unprecedented.
Nor is that the only astonishing aspect of the new National Intelligence Estimate that flatly contradicts the 2005 NIE, which had concluded that Iran was plowing ahead toward a nuclear weapon.
For if the intelligence agencies were 100 percent wrong about Iraq’s WMD, the casus belli of today’s war, and they have been 100 percent wrong for four years about Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, how can we trust them? How can we rely on them in formulating policy?
And if we cannot trust our intelligence agencies to distinguish disinformation from truth, and if we have blundered horribly once into war and almost blundered a second time, how can we justify the Bush policy of pre-emptive strikes and preventive war?
… if Iran’s regime is rational, which is how it has behaved, if not how it talks, we have an altogether different adversary we can deal with. For while possession of an atom bomb may give Iran a deterrent, it would also set in train a series of almost certain events that would do less to enhance the security of Iran than to imperil it permanently.
For, if Iran acquires an atomic weapon, Israel will put its nuclear arsenal of hundreds of warheads on a hair trigger. The United States would re-target nuclear weapons on Iran. Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would almost certainly acquire nuclear weapons or a nuclear capacity. How would any of that make Shia Iran safer in a Sunni world?
Finally, if Iran did suspend or terminate its nuclear weapons program in 2003, this suggests that the arrival of the U.S. army in Baghdad, and the capture of Saddam, concentrated the minds of the mullahs wonderfully. This suggests that those who say Iran, like Libya, had on offer a grand bargain — to give up nuclear ambitions and end its aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, in return for an end to sanctions and the U.S. drive for regime change, and the normalization of relations — may have been right.
Thus, what the NIE implies is that George Bush may have missed the opportunity to put himself in the history books alongside Nixon, who opened up China, and Reagan, who ended the Cold War with Russia.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:30 pm on Saturday, December 15, 2007
3 Responses to “American Misconception”
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December 16th, 2007 at 1:55 am
1. My guess is that the 16 other Int orgs signed the NIE without agreeing to it. Which then leave the CIA (and possibly INR/State) as the ‘responsible agencies’.
2. Just because the President has read and acknowledged this NIE does not mean he has accepted it as guidance. The speed with which it was made public indicates that he might not be as impressed as some think.
3. I would keep a watch on the CIA retirement plot over the next 6 - 12 months.
Cheers
December 16th, 2007 at 2:13 am
I haven’t trusted the CIA since I found out that they were rootin’ for the other side of politics. And I would like to see a breakdown of the input into the NIE. I really don’t think that the Defense Intel is in lockstep with the CIA and would be curious as to what they had to say. MCID was the agency for the Marine Corps in my day and they were serious about intel.
December 17th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
What they did wasn’t innocently done. In my book they have provided aid and comfort–and a strategic victory–to an avowed enemy.