They must be celebrating in Tehran. On December 3, and in direct opposition to the conclusions drawn from Israeli intelligence sources, the latest National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 with no evidence to suggest it had re-started it (although, as Walid Phares of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies points out: "stopping a single production process of a

Between a US-backed liberal democracy and the champion of radical Islamism (Iran), guess who has just emerged as the strong horse.

nuclear weapon is not equivalent to putting an end to a strategic policy of obtaining such arms").


"Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," says the summary's second sentence, while expressing only "moderate confidence" that Tehran has not restarted its military program.


The report says "with high confidence" that Iran did have a secret nuclear weapons program and that it stopped only after it got caught and was threatened with international punishment in 2003 (specifically, an invasion similar to that of Afghanistan and Iraq).(1) Presenting the NIE Report, George Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said: "The estimate offers ground for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically without the use of force, as the administration has being trying to do." Bombing Iran, it seems, is now off the table and sanctions against Iran can also be expected to dissipate. After all, why punish Iran if it's not going for the bomb?


On the face of it, it appears to be a betrayal of Israel, which is on the frontlines and has consistently argued that Iranian nuclear intentions are military, not civilian, and that Iran will possess nuclear capability at some point during 2009. It is also a humiliation for an administration that has repeatedly argued that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. As Robert Baer writes: "The Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far."


While the reasons given for the NIE vary from secret deals made by the US with the mullahs in return for a cessation of terrorist activities in Iraq to a British intelligence report suggesting that the American intelligence community was fed disinformation that led to the NIE, we will never really know. We do know, however, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already called it "a victory." And why not? In the contest for influence between a US-backed liberal democracy and the champion of radical Islamism (Iran), guess who has just emerged as the strong horse and who the weak horse. The Saudis have pretty well figured it out. Doubtless the Israelis have, too.


There is every reason to conclude, however, that the NIE is flawed. After all, the distinction between Iran's "military" and "civilian" programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical both to civilian and military uses, and both remain controlled by the radical Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Besides, the US intelligence community has a poor track record regarding nuclear weapons programs and has made many incorrect judgments on some of the most critical proliferation cases of our time including Iraq, Libya, North Korea and, of late, Syria - not to mention the events leading up to 9/11.


Nevertheless, if the conclusions of the NIE are genuine, then it now appears that US military action against Iran will not take place in the foreseeable future. Worse, the implications of the Report suggest that Israel will be left to deal with Iran and the radical Islamic wave sweeping through the Middle East. And if that should happen, then Israel can expect to be subjected to international censure far worse than it experienced when it bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981.


The amazing thing about the NIE is that the facts overwhelmingly suggest that Iran has never given up its intentions to pursue nuclear weapons for military purposes. Even now, Tehran's scientists are working to master the skills to make nuclear fuel - the hardest part of building a weapon. The Iranians have brought in Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and North Korean technology to develop a nuclear weapons infrastructure that far surpasses their need for civilian energy. They have broken the seals on their critical nuclear reactors, announced that they have attained nuclear fission production capability and made fools of IAEA inspectors (not to mention the Europeans and Americans).


Beginning with the August 2002 announcement by the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), it was clear that Iran had concealed a clandestine nuclear weapons program for the preceding fourteen years. Satellite imagery has confirmed a conversion plant at Isfahan in central Iran, uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, a plutonium/heavy water processing center at Arak(2), a uranium hexafluoride gas (a critical component in nuclear weapons production) production site near Isfahan, and many other sites throughout the country. And the Iranians were none too happy about our knowledge of them.


After the NCRI revealed the existence of the Lavizan laser enrichment site near Tehran in 2004, a full year after the NIE now says Iran's nuclear weapons program supposedly ended, the regime razed the site to the ground, removed the topsoil and every single tree in the vicinity in order to conceal any trace of radioactivity (as the Syrians did recently after the Israeli air strike on their nuclear facility on September 6, 2007). All equipment from that site was moved to a new site, where the laser enrichment activity resumed.


Furthermore, Agence France Presse reported that in 2005, Iran bought eighteen Russian SS-N-6 ballistic missiles from North Korea. What's notable about these missiles is that they were specifically designed to carry one megaton nuclear warheads - a rather strange purchase if the Iranian nuclear warhead program was abandoned in 2003.


And just last month, the IAEA issued a report criticizing Tehran for providing "diminishing" information and access to its current program. According to Clare Lopez, writing in the December 4, 2007, issue of Middle East Times: "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 2004 discovery of polonium inside Iran also would suggest strong evidence that Iran was involved well past 2003 in the production of trigger systems for nuclear warheads. Corroboration of the IAEA's findings came from the NCRI, which detailed an ongoing program of polonium and berylium acquisition by Iran. There are simply no other credible uses for these rare and expensive isotopes than warhead

One morning, we will wake up to a nuclear Iran unless regime change is on the agenda.

triggers. Even more recently, the November 2006 death of former KGB officer Andrei Litvinenko by self-ingested polonium blew the lid off a polonium smuggling operation that transited through London en route to Iran and other end users, including al-Qaeda and the Chechens."


American intelligence must know that, one morning, we will wake up to a nuclear Iran unless regime change is on the agenda. Is it a cost-benefit approach for one of the world's largest oil exporters to withstand international sanctions and economic ruin for the sake of a peaceful nuclear program? Are we now to believe that all Iran's secret nuclear efforts, threats to annihilate Israel and funding global Islamic terrorist organizations for the past five years have been because of their determination to create more electrical power for Tehran? Sixteen separate US intelligence agencies just couldn't be that naive.


Notes
(1) Israel and others have argued that in 2004, an election year, the anti-war movement in the US was seen by the Iranian mullahs as an opportunity to re-launch their nuclear weapons program while America was distracted by Iranian-inspired terrorism in Iraq and the anti-war movement at home.


(2) This reactor is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran's, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel.