what Iranian nukes?

Iran had a nuclear weapons program but halted it in 2003 and had not restarted it as of mid-2007. The halt applied to design and engineering of an explosive device, such as fuses or shielding, and to covert uranium-conversion activities, according to senior intelligence officials. Other activities such as civilian uranium enrichment and missile development continue.

The weapons program was halted in response to international pressure, meaning Tehran may be more susceptible to influence than previously thought.

Any production of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons would probably take place at a covert facility rather than a declared nuclear site. Covert enrichment programs were probably halted in 2003 and had not been restarted as of mid-2007.

SockPuppet said:
the USA's intelligence agencies do not believe that Iran has a current nuclear weapons programme.

Ascanius said:

Oh, great. Now I'm sure they've got a nuke program. Just when I was starting to feel safe.

SockPuppet said:

You'd rather believe W?

Ascanius said:

I just figure if George W. Bush says one thing, t'other must be true.

Tigerwong said:

Fixed.

SockPuppet said:
Today, Reuters reports that the USA's intelligence agents do not believe that they nor their grandchildren will be able to pay off the sub-prime mortgages that will be needed to rebalance the US trade defecit that a second occupation will cost the U.S. economy.

Some highlights from the Reuters story:

There's a lot more there; go look.

That goes for the White House too.

KUNGFOO said:
Neoconservatives are really pissed their war has just been undermined.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again.

This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding.

Rafi said:
"We have no doubt that Iran now possesses an alarming number of atoms ...

Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons "for 20 years," he defiantly declared today. To give weight to a single intelligence estimate "would be a mistake." On Fox News today, [John] Bolton went even further and called for a congressional investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies, stating that the report was politicized by intelligence officials who have their "own agenda"

A number of media reports have stated that the NIE is consistent with the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog group that has conducted extensive inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities. The agency's director general Mohamed ElBaradei welcomed the report, saying that it would help to defuse the mounting international crisis.
The differences between the US intelligence estimate and the UN agency's findings, however, were made clear in a statement by an IAEA official to the Times:

"Despite repeated smear campaigns, the IAEA has stood its ground and concluded time and again that since 2002 there was no evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran. It also validates the assessment of the director general that what the IAEA inspectors have seen in Iran represented no imminent danger."

In other words, the UN agency found no evidence that the nuclear weapons program the NIE now claims was in operation until 2003 ever existed.

In this sense, the shift by the US intelligence agencies from expressing "high confidence" in 2005 that Iran was engaged in an attempt "to develop nuclear weapons," to asserting with the same "high confidence" two years later that the Iranians had halted such a program in 2003 may represent the substitution of one phony pretext for war for another.

No evidence has ever been presented to substantiate the existence of a nuclear weapons program. And no description is offered in the current NIE of precisely what activities were halted in 2003.

These findings constitute a damning indictment of the Bush administration's relentless fear-mongering in relation to an alleged nuclear threat from Iran. They demonstrate that just as in the buildup to the war against Iraq five years ago, the White House has been engaged in a systematic campaign to drag the American people into another war based on lies.

Nonetheless, Bush seized upon the claims made in the document about a previous arms program to argue that Iran could revive it at any time, using its civilian program to develop fuel for atomic power plants to speed up the building of a bomb.

"What's to say that they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?" he asked.

Based upon this pretext, he laid out - in terms that directly echoed the rhetoric preceding the unprovoked 2003 US invasion of Iraq - the case for preventive war.

While Bush insisted that the NIE bolstered his case for an aggressive policy against Iran and confirmed that policy's effectiveness, the document had the effect internationally of a political bombshell.

In the first instance, it has apparently scuttled Washington's attempts to push another round of punishing anti-Iranian sanctions through the United Nations Security Council. "Officially, we will study the document carefully; unofficially, our efforts to build up momentum for another resolution are gone," a European official involved in sanctions negotiations told the New York Times.

China, which had reportedly bowed to US pressure at a meeting of Security Council members in Paris, now indicated that its position had changed in light of the NIE. Asked whether sanctions were now less likely, China's ambassador to the UN, Guangya Wang, responded, "I think the council members will have to consider that, because I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed."

The ambassador of Russia, which has opposed stepped-up sanctions, said that the NIE vindicated Moscow's position. "We have always been saying there is no proof they are pursuing nuclear weapons," said Vitaly Churkin.

While the American president is famous for his lack of intellectual curiosity, the claim that he was informed in August by his intelligence director that there was new information about Iran's nuclear program, but was content to wait until it came out in a published report four months later, is simply not credible.

The reality is that in August the administration was engaged in a major propaganda campaign against Iran, with Bush delivering speeches containing unsubstantiated charges that Iran was responsible for attacks on US occupation forces in Iraq and was threatening the world with a "nuclear holocaust." At the same time, the US was staging provocations against Iran, with the arrest of its diplomatic officials in Iraq. It was then that the White House first announced its threat to brand the country's largest uniformed security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as a "terrorist organization."

The findings of the National Intelligence Estimate are the product of a protracted struggle within the administration and particularly its military and intelligence apparatus. The document's release had been delayed for over a year, reportedly because of attempts by Bush and Cheney to force the intelligence agencies to withdraw findings that exposed as fabrications the administration's charges regarding Iran's supposed weapons program and its alleged support for attacks on US forces in Iraq.

That the final draft not only failed to provide the administration with "intelligence" supporting its claims of an imminent Iranian threat, but directly repudiated the claims made about an Iranian weapons program in the 2005 NIE, is a measure of the extreme tensions and unease within both the military command and the CIA about the prospects of launching a US war against Iran.

Director of National Security McConnell indicated earlier this year that the NIE on Iranian nuclear activities would not be declassified, a position apparently supported by Bush and Cheney. The decision to release some of its findings may have been prompted by knowledge that it would otherwise be leaked to the media, perhaps from within the intelligence apparatus itself.

The threat of another, bloodier war remains real and present. Its source lies not in a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program, but in mounting inter-imperialist conflicts and, above all, the predatory drive by American capitalism to offset its economic decline by utilizing military force.

Washington remains determined to assert its hegemony over the vast energy resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. It has launched two wars in the last six years to realize this goal, and there is every reason to believe that it is still preparing a third.

Rafi said:
In equally terrifying news, it's being reported that Iran possesses trillions of potentially dangerous atoms:

"We have no doubt that Iran now possesses an alarming number of atoms within its borders, despite countless warnings from the international community," Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said at a press conference Monday afternoon, as he pointed to a satellite image marked with dozens of locations where his office claims the unauthorized atoms are being held. "The Iranians maintain the atoms are only being used to form the building blocks of all existence, but we cannot afford to take that risk."

(Seriously, the Bush admin's rhetoric on the mid-east makes it damn near impossible to determine what's real and what comes from the Onion.)

SockPuppet said:
The whole thing tends to support many people's assertions (here and elsewhere) that Iran's nuclear ambitions are primarily political (as opposed to destructive).

Which is good; it suggests that the Iranian rulership actually accept the status quo, even if Ahamdinejad insists on blustering about other nuclear-armed states.

hadees said:
Except 2 years ago the intelligence estimate said the Iran was developing nukes and if Iraq has shown us anything it is that our intelligence sucks. I would say this doesn't change our current sanctions route one bit although it might give us pause before a military strike.

What I really like about the estimate though is that it shows the white house isn't fucking with the intelligence reports anymore.

It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program.

The assessment, not the intelligence, is different. Israel does a worst case analysis

"The Americans say we haven't seen the evidence, Israel is saying it's a hidden program we don't have access to"

Barak offers - "We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the globe, even if it is from our greatest friend

hadees said:

Except 2 years ago the intelligence estimate said the Iran was developing nukes and if Iraq has shown us anything it is that our intelligence sucks. I would say this doesn't change our current sanctions route one bit although it might give us pause before a military strike.

What I really like about the estimate though is that it shows the white house isn't fucking with the intelligence reports anymore.

Adroitbeing said:
Wow what an unsurprising response. Nearly identical to what Joel Greenberg wrote for the McClatchy News Service in quoting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak: