Congressional Intelligence Report a Bunch of Made Up Garbage

The past several years have seen a constant drumbeat of Bush administration rhetoric on the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The tension culminated in a somewhat weak-willed deadline issued by Bush that Iran stop all uranium enrichment by August 31 or face undetermined consequences. Iran ignored the deadline and repercussions have not yet arrived. Despite Bush's bellicosity against Iran, war plans seemed to have been scrapped when Iraq turned sour and Bush lost whatever political capital he had in that arena. Which is a good thing too, because the IAEA, the watchdog organization whose job it is to, among other things, determine compliance with the nuclear non-prolifereation treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, has described US intelligence on the state of Iran's nuclear arsenal to be a giant, steaming pile of crap. Of course the US would never go to war based on faulty intelligence information, would it? The Congress, of course, is fighting back the only way it seems to know how; by slandering the IAEA.

The International Atomic Energy Agency wrote the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, lambasting it for claiming that the Islamic republic "is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade."

Iran is far from that capability, the IAEA said.

Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which prepared the report, said the subcommittee's assertion is "very clear."

"It says that we don't believe that they've gotten there. But the point of that whole section is, they are trying to enrich uranium to weapons grade," he said.

The subcommittee's report also insinuates that the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The report alleges that an IAEA inspector might have been removed at Iran's request "for not adhering to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program."

The IAEA shot back that the claim was "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion," but Rogers stood by it Thursday.

"The Iranians said take him off the program, and they said OK. You can't have Iran getting to pick who is their inspectors," Rogers said.

The IAEA has been down this road before, when it entered the fray over Iraq's weapons program before the 2003 U.S. invasion. During that tussle, the Bush administration criticized the agency for being too cautious and opposed the reappointment of agency chief Mohammed El-Baradei.

"This is a very troubling instance here, this report, of U.S. policymakers in my view trying to push the intelligence community to find evidence that they believe supports their suspicions and their end policy goals," said Daryl Kimball of the nonprofit think tank, the Arms Control Association in Washington.
The prospect of a nuclear armed Iran is disturbing for pretty much everyone. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone on record stating that he'd like to nuclear armed neighbor Israel "wiped off the map." If both countries have nukes and are actively hostile to one another, it could be a serious problem. So if he really is close to getting nuclear weapons it should be a highly motivating factor to actually deal with Iran. But of course, all that hinges on Iran's actually being close to developing nuclear weapons.

Despite what Republican scaremongers would have the general public believe, constructing a nuclear weapon de novo is not as easy as it sounds. Plans to enrich uranium are quite different from having already done so - especially if Iran is pursuing the considerably more difficult laser based enrichment strategty rather than more traditional centrifuge based methods. If Iran already has weapons grade uranium then the time for immediate (hopefully diplomatic) action is now. But if they're still in the planning stages then a more measured pace in interacting with the country could produce better long terms relations with what will most likely be a dominant power in the region in coming years. Accurate intelligence information is therefore key in determining the proper course of action, and just making things up to suit a political agenda is an unthinkable approach considering what's at stake.

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