2003

I think it's important to put the revelations that Iran halted its nuclear "program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure" in the context of the broader trends in US-Iranian relations that Gareth Porter (among others) have reported on. Specifically, in 2003 we know that the Iranians attempted a diplomatic opening to the United States. Porter reported that in exchange for actually getting something, Iran was prepared to abandon its nuclear program in a hard-to-reverse way:

To meet the U.S. concern about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, the document offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology." It proposed "full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD" and "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)."

There have been some efforts to discredit what Porter, Flynt Leverret, and others have said about this attempted opening, but the NIE's conclusions about Iran's nuclear program seem to strongly support it. With their secret enrichment activities exposed, the Iranian regime was reconsidering the utility of continuing such efforts in the face of international awareness and disapproval of them. The Bush administration then decided to squander this opportunity and focus on saber-rattling and dreams of regime change. But the thing about pressure is that you've got to be willing to take yes for an answer instead of just blundering around.

Meanwhile, how outrageous is it that the best twelve months of alarmism from Bush & Cheney have come in the context of an environment where they've long had access to the intelligence community's assessment? Answer: Very outrageous.

Comments

Why do all the well-connected, reasonable people on Iran have such cool sounding names? Gareth Porter? Flynt Leverret? It's like a freaking Mickey Spillane novel...

Posted by dan k | December 3, 2007 3:12 PM

They didn't want to stop Iran's nuclear program. They wanted to go to war with Iran. The one was just a pretext for the other.

Remember when Saddam destroyed all those missiles right before we invaded? Nobody thought that was actually going to stop us from attacking -- just because he did the thing we told him to do or else we'd attack.

I mean, c'mon.

Posted by carlton | December 3, 2007 3:40 PM

I dunno. It seems at least possible that this NIE is a response to the sacking of Larijani for Jalili. That is, it represents not so much a "defeat" for the Cheney-Podhoretz contingent after some murky internecine struggle, as a new tack with the Europeans in response to Iran's confident stonewalling; given the opportunity for a real sanctions regime, they are giving up the wildman card in exchange for consensus (at least among western Europeans) on isolating Iran. In this scenario Podhoretz was simply being used (though Rudy true to form bought his silliness hook line and sinker). Remember, from the perspective of semi-rational American Likudniks, bombing of Iran would be a catastrophe, but a sanctions regime with teeth would be a significant achievement.

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 3:49 PM

What's the political fall out of this for the 2008 election? My guess is that it hurts Rudy because he's the one most anxious to bomb Iran.

Posted by Exile on Ericsson St. | December 3, 2007 3:50 PM

Four years at Harvard and you still can't spell "Leverett"?

Posted by agum | December 3, 2007 3:54 PM

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE
MEMORANDUM

To: Richard B. Cheney, VPOTUS

From: Directors Of Intelligence Analysis: CIA, NSA, DIA, OAI, ONI, OAFI, NRO, SDI, OHS

Re: Status Of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Development

Concensus Overview:
Analysis of all relevant HUMINT, ELINT and PHOTOINT strongly supports the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear weapons development program has been 'On Hold' since 2003.

Analysis:
While they may decide to produce a nuclear weapon in future, Iran's nuclear program does not pose a threat to nations in the region, or to the interests of the United States and its allies.

Concensus Conclusion: Fuck You.

cc:
D.Harrington, N.Podhoretz, R.Perle, D.Feith, M.Ledeen, W.Kristol,

Posted by Jemand von Niemand | December 3, 2007 4:02 PM

Hmmm. 2003, huh? Wonder what could have happened in 2003 that caused Iran to end its nuclear program?

Posted by Al | December 3, 2007 4:08 PM

Four years at Harvard and you still can't spell "Leverett"?

And to think, I took New America Foundation Fellows 214 and Former NSC Staffers 112!

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | December 3, 2007 4:09 PM

Al: Wonder what could have happened in 2003 that caused Iran to end its nuclear program?

Delmar O'Donnell: [leaning in, speaking slower] We thought you was a toad!

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 3, 2007 4:16 PM

Al: I think that is going to be the White House line. But this, makes its implications interesting, to say the least.

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 4:17 PM

This is just one more piece of evidence that the whole foreign policy approach of the Bush Administration is under the Pax Americana doctrine of the Project for a New American Century folks. Just as Iraq was never about WMD, Iran was never about a current nuclear program.

Posted by Galen | December 3, 2007 4:28 PM

Speaking of cool names, what is the badassest first name for an American guy?

Stab?

Posted by ferd | December 3, 2007 4:32 PM

Here's the AP headline on the NIE story:

US: Iran Still Able to Develop Nukes

Oh yeah, that's a fair summary of the report. God.

Posted by Glenn | December 3, 2007 4:40 PM

So, the locked up NIE leaks out, just that easily? I wouldn't run too far with this story without talking to lots of Iran analysts who had recently retired or been pushed out.

Posted by alex | December 3, 2007 4:41 PM

I was under the impression that producing highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantity is the more difficult piece of building a nuke and that actually building the weapon is the easy and less time-consuming piece, relatively speaking. Does anyone know if that's correct? If so, then because Iran is still enriching uranium, this revelation really says more about the regime's intentions than their long-term capabilities, right?

Posted by SW | December 3, 2007 4:57 PM

Neocon/AIPAC types on suicide watch.

Posted by kafka | December 3, 2007 7:16 PM

Speaking of cool names, what is the badassest first name for an American guy?
A tie:

Fate Marable & Satchel Paige.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 3, 2007 8:16 PM

Is there any evidence that, even in 2003, that Iran was actively involved in developing nukes?

Seriously -- while Iran was hiding its enrichment activities, it made perfect sense for them to do so even if they were pursuing "peaceful" uses of nuclear power. After all, Israel has a rather nasty habit of bombing anything that looks radioactive.

to me, the real question is how badly the Europeans have been getting played in all of this -- and what their reaction is going to be. (I'd also suggest that the reason the NIE report was finally released is that European intelligence agencies were about to announce the same thing, and tell Bushco to sod off with his sanctions regime...)

Posted by p_lukasiak | December 3, 2007 8:19 PM

I agree with p_lukasiak. There is zero evidence that Iran was EVER pursuing nuclear weapons. There might be some evidence that the Iranian military was interested on its own hook, but there is no evidence that the Iranian leadership per se had authorized a deliberate nuclear weapons program.

What we're seeing here in this NIE is a weasel-worded attempt to cover the intelligence community's ass by claiming that 1) Iran had a program, 2) Iran stopped the program under threat by the US, and 3) we got it right all along.

None of which is likely to be true.

But let's move on. The real problem for the neocons and Dick Cheney and the Zionists now is that Haaretz is claiming that this NIE takes the military option off the table for the next five years anyway. I actually don't see that as being the case. The NIE may be saying that Iran can't have the bomb for another five years IF THEY START NOW (and they AREN'T starting now, as the IAEA makes clear), but they still claim (correctly) that IF someday Iran DID want a bomb, if they continue uranium enrichment, they COULD have one.

I think that will be sufficient justification for Cheney and crew to continue to beat the war drums. So I don't think this NIE really changes anything in that regard. It may make it a bit harder for Cheney to use the WMD excuse as an "imminent" thing (i.e., "Iran will have a bomb next year"), but he has plenty of others ("terrorist sponsor", "attacking US troops in Iraq", blah, blah). And Israel is not going to go along with the NIE at all.

Israel's problem is that they really don't want to be the ones who start the Iran war. They want the US to do it. Cheney wants them to do it so he can bypass the US Congress and the US public. That was what the $30 billion arms sale bribe was all about. So far, however, Israel seems to be hesitating to go for it. I don't know what's behind that - it could be something as simple as this business with Annapolis. It would be hard for Israel to launch an Iran war while trying to be "peace makers" with regard to the Palestinians. Which, by the way, makes it unlikely that Annapolis will produce anything concrete since attacking Iran IS an Israeli priority.

Scott Ritter has pointed out that this is an "elective war", so the neocons need a relative period of quiet in other areas to launch it. The problems with Pakistan may derail the plan entirely. But Bush and Cheney are running out of time. If they want it done, they have to do it within the next six to nine months.

Ritter thinks it must happen before the election season gets under way, which would put spring as the latest. I think it could happen any time up to next October. Bush and Cheney would want the attack to give the Republicans a boost during the election season, but if the war goes bad quickly, it would be risky to start it too soon in the election season. Better to wait until the last minute, so that any negative effect would be minimized while still allowing for a positive bump in the initial days.

Of course, that assumes some rational calculation on the part of Bush and Cheney. If they're dumb enough to believe that an Iran war will not go bad, or they don't care if it does, then they could launch it almost any time.

So I'd say this NIE leaves everything pretty much as it was before it was released.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 3, 2007 8:46 PM

"Meanwhile, how outrageous is it that the best twelve months of alarmism from Bush & Cheney have come in the context of an environment where they've long had access to the intelligence community's assessment?"

Hadley noted today in his press conference that the intel that led to the revisiting of the IC's assessment only came within "the last few months" and that this new conclusion was only reached last Tuesday...

Posted by matt | December 3, 2007 10:56 PM

SW 4:57: I was under the impression that producing highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantity is the more difficult piece of building a nuke and that actually building the weapon is the easy and less time-consuming piece, relatively speaking.

From what I've read, they're both hard. Enrichment to weapon grade is difficult because so much more of it is required than for enrichment to nuclear power grade, which in turn requires cascades of centrifuges that are highly coordinated and highly reliable (since they must run for a long time uninterrupted). Assembly of a weapon requires extremely precise geometry and similarly precise timing -- to the point that the electrical switches with the necessary precision are almost as closely guarded as the fissile material. And of course, both require the ability to handle and shape radioactive material, access to the right kind and purity of high explosive, and other engineering challenges.

In short, a series of really hard engineering tasks, all of which must be done precisely correctly for the damn thing to have a chance of working.

Contrast that with so called "dirty bombs," i.e., basically conventional bombs salted with some amount of radioactive material. Much less refinement, much less precision, much less complexity, much less design sophistication. Nowhere nearly as big a blast, true, but a fabulous terrorist weapon, given Everyman's near-complete ignorance, and thus fear, of radioactivity. To me, these are the "asymmetric warfare" response to actual nukes -- much simpler, certainly less physically destructive, but arguably equally effective politically.

It may be true that Iran has halted the development of true nuclear weapons. But if I were keeping an eye on things, I'd still be worried about their low-tech counterpart...

Posted by bleh | December 3, 2007 11:07 PM

Hmmm. 2003, huh? Wonder what could have happened in 2003 that caused Iran to end its nuclear program?

The iraq war.

But the fact that is the only thing you take from this indicates that, like too many republicans, you are only too happy to stab your country in the back to advance the interests of your party.

You and yours are going to be, to quote Douglas Adams, "A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes"

Posted by r4d20 | December 4, 2007 12:14 AM

It may be true that Iran has halted the development of true nuclear weapons. But if I were keeping an eye on things, I'd still be worried about their low-tech counterpart...

Uranium makes for a crappy dirty bomb material. We'd be better off keeping an eye on where old discarded x-ray machines end up.

Posted by daveNYC | December 4, 2007 12:26 AM

Implying that this Iranian decision in mid-2003 had nothing to do with our invasion of Iraq is almost as stupid as the "up against the wall mf'ers" rhetoric.

And who's really on "suicide watch" are all the nutbags who were confidently predicting Cheney would single-handedly launch a war with Iran any minute.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 4, 2007 3:04 AM

SW: If so, then because Iran is still enriching uranium, this revelation really says more about the regime's intentions than their long-term capabilities, right?

You are aware that one has to enrich uranium to use it in a power plant reactor, right?

Posted by W. Kiernan | December 4, 2007 6:20 AM

Hack and Lukasiak having done the heavy lifting, I can only add that you others are dead wrong about the badassest American name evah. Clearly that was Theolonius Sphere Monk.

Posted by DrBB | December 4, 2007 6:34 AM

"You are aware that one has to enrich uranium to use it in a power plant reactor, right?"

Well, this is what the Russians are doing for the only light water reactor in Iran @ Bushehr: supplying Iran enriched uranium so Iran would not have to do it itself. As of last week, the first installment was being inspected by the IAEA and being readied for shipment.

Posted by matt | December 4, 2007 7:46 AM

"Assembly of a weapon requires extremely precise geometry and similarly precise timing -- to the point that the electrical switches with the necessary precision are almost as closely guarded as the fissile material..."

A plutonium bomb requires an elaborate high explosive triggering device to precisely compress the plutonium sphere to initiate the fission chain reaction.

An enriched uranium (U 235) bomb does not require an elaborate triggering device. This was the type dropped on Hiroshima. It was never tested beforehand. The bomb tested in July 1945 was a plutonium bomb, the type dropped on Nagasaki.

Posted by kafka | December 4, 2007 8:07 AM

SW 4:57: I was under the impression that producing highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantity is the more difficult piece of building a nuke and that actually building the weapon is the easy and less time-consuming piece, relatively speaking.

You are correct. The gun type HEU-235 bomb is very simple and used basic artillery componebts. It was so simple and obviously reliable a design 63 years ago that the US didn't even bother testing it before dropping the 1st one on Hiroshima.
Plutonium is harder because it's "reactivity" is much higher than U-235 so it cannot be used in a gun type bomb because the chain reaction happens faster and blows the "bullet part" of the bomb's critical mass apart before it can fully fission the critical mass.
Next gen, 3rd Gen weapons are far harder to construct than 1st gen gun-types, which have had validated designs done by HS students and undergrads in tests the Russians and Americans did in the 60s when they began worrying about proliferation to unstable 3rd-Worlders.

Uranium makes for a crappy dirty bomb material. We'd be better off keeping an eye on where old discarded x-ray machines end up.
Posted by daveNYC

Ridiculous on both counts. The Russians preferred HEU for their light yield A-Bombs, Hydrogen bombs, and 60-100KT boosted fission bombs. We had several all-HEU designs in the 50s and 60s. As for dirt bombs - only the most ignorant equate the harm a dirty bomb can cause with a real nuclear weapon. Indeed, the only danger of a dirty bomb is in panicking similarly ignorant people.

You are aware that one has to enrich uranium to use it in a power plant reactor, right?
Posted by W. Kiernan

You only need 3% enrichment to run the largest commercial reactors. The Iranian centrifuge program, the numbers they cite wishing to operate in cascade, go beyond that - to produce HEU ranging from 15% to 95% enrichment.

And it makes no economic sense to develop enrichment and divert away from using the capital for plant construction - given the excess capacity of enrichment facilities in the USA, Brazil, Benelux, France, Russia.

Implying that this Iranian decision in mid-2003 had nothing to do with our invasion of Iraq is almost as stupid as the "up against the wall mf'ers" rhetoric. Powell

True. It was also UK and USA having the goods on Libya, and the Libyans deciding to "come to Jesus" and expose the entire AQ Khan network, along with implosion bomb blueprints the cocksucking Chinese gave to the Pakis - once they realized how fast the US could be in Benghazi and Tripoli if America didn't care about whacking some little brown babies in the process. In 2003 the Libyans gave us stuff that AQ Kahns group orginally sent to Iran. Documents made in Farsi. The Iranians knew we knew and stopped A-Bomb work but kept up their HEU weapons grade uranium project.
Them cancelling bomb work, for now, as far as we know, is a good thing if the intelligence is right.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 8:34 AM

SW 4:57: I was under the impression that producing highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantity is the more difficult piece of building a nuke and that actually building the weapon is the easy and less time-consuming piece, relatively speaking.

You are correct. The gun type HEU-235 bomb is very simple and used basic artillery componebts. It was so simple and obviously reliable a design 63 years ago that the US didn't even bother testing it before dropping the 1st one on Hiroshima.
Plutonium is harder because it's "reactivity" is much higher than U-235 so it cannot be used in a gun type bomb because the chain reaction happens faster and blows the "bullet part" of the bomb's critical mass apart before it can fully fission the critical mass.
Next gen, 3rd Gen weapons are far harder to construct than 1st gen gun-types, which have had validated designs done by HS students and undergrads in tests the Russians and Americans did in the 60s when they began worrying about proliferation to unstable 3rd-Worlders.

Uranium makes for a crappy dirty bomb material. We'd be better off keeping an eye on where old discarded x-ray machines end up.
Posted by daveNYC

Ridiculous on both counts. The Russians preferred HEU for their light yield A-Bombs, Hydrogen bombs, and 60-100KT boosted fission bombs. We had several all-HEU designs in the 50s and 60s. As for dirt bombs - only the most ignorant equate the harm a dirty bomb can cause with a real nuclear weapon. Indeed, the only danger of a dirty bomb is in panicking similarly ignorant people.

You are aware that one has to enrich uranium to use it in a power plant reactor, right?
Posted by W. Kiernan

You only need 3% enrichment to run the largest commercial reactors. The Iranian centrifuge program, the numbers they cite wishing to operate in cascade, go beyond that - to produce HEU ranging from 15% to 95% enrichment.

And it makes no economic sense to develop enrichment and divert away from using the capital for plant construction - given the excess capacity of enrichment facilities in the USA, Brazil, Benelux, France, Russia.

Implying that this Iranian decision in mid-2003 had nothing to do with our invasion of Iraq is almost as stupid as the "up against the wall mf'ers" rhetoric. Powell

True. It was also UK and USA having the goods on Libya, and the Libyans deciding to "come to Jesus" and expose the entire AQ Khan network, along with implosion bomb blueprints the cocksucking Chinese gave to the Pakis - once they realized how fast the US could be in Benghazi and Tripoli if America didn't care about whacking some little brown babies in the process. In 2003 the Libyans gave us stuff that AQ Kahns group orginally sent to Iran. Documents made in Farsi. The Iranians knew we knew and stopped A-Bomb work but kept up their HEU weapons grade uranium project.
Them cancelling bomb work, for now, as far as we know, is a good thing if the intelligence is right.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 8:35 AM

SW 4:57: I was under the impression that producing highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantity is the more difficult piece of building a nuke and that actually building the weapon is the easy and less time-consuming piece, relatively speaking.

You are correct. The gun type HEU-235 bomb is very simple and used basic artillery componebts. It was so simple and obviously reliable a design 63 years ago that the US didn't even bother testing it before dropping the 1st one on Hiroshima.
Plutonium is harder because it's "reactivity" is much higher than U-235 so it cannot be used in a gun type bomb because the chain reaction happens faster and blows the "bullet part" of the bomb's critical mass apart before it can fully fission the critical mass.
Next gen, 3rd Gen weapons are far harder to construct than 1st gen gun-types, which have had validated designs done by HS students and undergrads in tests the Russians and Americans did in the 60s when they began worrying about proliferation to unstable 3rd-Worlders.

Uranium makes for a crappy dirty bomb material. We'd be better off keeping an eye on where old discarded x-ray machines end up.
Posted by daveNYC

Ridiculous on both counts. The Russians preferred HEU for their light yield A-Bombs, Hydrogen bombs, and 60-100KT boosted fission bombs. We had several all-HEU designs in the 50s and 60s. As for dirt bombs - only the most ignorant equate the harm a dirty bomb can cause with a real nuclear weapon. Indeed, the only danger of a dirty bomb is in panicking similarly ignorant people.

You are aware that one has to enrich uranium to use it in a power plant reactor, right?
Posted by W. Kiernan

You only need 3% enrichment to run the largest commercial reactors. The Iranian centrifuge program, the numbers they cite wishing to operate in cascade, go beyond that - to produce HEU ranging from 15% to 95% enrichment.

And it makes no economic sense to develop enrichment and divert away from using the capital for plant construction - given the excess capacity of enrichment facilities in the USA, Brazil, Benelux, France, Russia.

Implying that this Iranian decision in mid-2003 had nothing to do with our invasion of Iraq is almost as stupid as the "up against the wall mf'ers" rhetoric. Powell

True. It was also UK and USA having the goods on Libya, and the Libyans deciding to "come to Jesus" and expose the entire AQ Khan network, along with implosion bomb blueprints the cocksucking Chinese gave to the Pakis - once they realized how fast the US could be in Benghazi and Tripoli if America didn't care about whacking some little brown babies in the process. In 2003 the Libyans gave us stuff that AQ Kahns group orginally sent to Iran. Documents made in Farsi. The Iranians knew we knew and stopped A-Bomb work but kept up their HEU weapons grade uranium project.
Them cancelling bomb work, for now, as far as we know, is a good thing if the intelligence is right.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 8:35 AM

Chris Fraud is a degenerate racist liar; the longer the comment the more there is for degenerate racist Chris Fraud to lie about.

Posted by Jennifer | December 4, 2007 9:20 AM

Chris Ford: You only need 3% enrichment to run the largest commercial reactors. The Iranian centrifuge program, the numbers they cite wishing to operate in cascade, go beyond that - to produce HEU ranging from 15% to 95% enrichment.

What numbers are these? Last I heard the Iranians were operating a number of parallel cascades of about 160 centrifuges each. Nothing about such a cascade necessarily indicates that its output product will be HEU. This is the same sort of cascade used in Europe and the U.S.A. to make LEU to fuel power reactors.

And it makes no economic sense to develop enrichment and divert away from using the capital for plant construction - given the excess capacity of enrichment facilities in the USA, Brazil, Benelux, France, Russia.

So the Iranians are supposed to build reactors, and then rely upon the good will of foreign government to keep them supplied with fuel. Right!

Posted by W. Kiernan | December 4, 2007 11:21 AM

What numbers are these? Last I heard the Iranians were operating a number of parallel cascades of about 160 centrifuges each. Nothing about such a cascade necessarily indicates that its output product will be HEU. This is the same sort of cascade used in Europe and the U.S.A. to make LEU to fuel power reactors.

Those numbers are based on the idiot Ahmadinejad saying Iran succeeded in a test run of 3,000 centrifuges in series. Maybe Ahmadinejad is an ignorant braggard, maybe he is an idiot that other Iranians involved in enrichment wish to strangle, but the Euros and the IAEA have both said Irans ambitious enrichment program has the troubling signs of going past 3%.

"And it makes no economic sense to develop enrichment and divert away from using the capital for plant construction - given the excess capacity of enrichment facilities in the USA, Brazil, Benelux, France, Russia."

So the Iranians are supposed to build reactors, and then rely upon the good will of foreign government to keep them supplied with fuel. Right!

Member nations in good standing with the IAEA have access to technology and enriched fuel guaranteed by the nuclear NPT. France relies on excess enrichment capacity of the Benelux facility to supplement their own, the Brits on the US. Japan, S Korea have built robust nuke power programs without developing enrichment or plutonium recycling facilities. Russia, as part of it's Bashar reactor deal, has offered to guarantee Iran it's fuel and take back spent fuel..

Economically, it makes the same sense as Nigeria deciding to build its own jet airliners and thus not buying any planes because all the money is in trying to make certain parts of a jet like aluminum tail sections while ignoring others like jet engines, wings.
(Iran has no way to build reactors. Or the replacement electronic components, titanium condensor tubing, gaskets, that need to be replaced every refueling. How to repair advanced turbines, pumps. Nor training the health physics, I&C, reactor operators, engineers needed to run their electricity makers. Nor has Iran invested the billions in the metallurgy and base needed to fabricate fuel assemblies and other reactor components. Just enrichment, and two Soviet-era reactors that have had construction stop on lack of Iranian funding off and on..)

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 4:06 PM