B a h r a m e r a d: How one man eased nerves on Iran : Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent

ON a winter afternoon in February, Ali Reza Ashgari, a moustachioed Iranian general, checked into a hotel in Istanbul, booked for him by two Europeans. Several days earlier, his wife and children had slipped quietly out of Tehran, unlikely to return. Ashgari has been in the hands of the CIA ever since, apparently a willing partner to its desperate and often futile attempt to learn just what Iran had in mind with its nuclear program and to glean the regional ambitions of its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ashgari was deputy defence minister in Tehran, as well as commander of the Revolutionary Guard, and keeper of many of the regime's secrets, including a detailed knowledge of its backing of the Shia militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah. But nothing that Ashgari could offer up was more central to US concerns than what he knew about Tehran's nuclear intentions.

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Exactly what Ashgari has told the Americans since is not entirely clear. However, two things are apparent in the minds of intelligence allies in the Middle East: he was instrumental in confirming worst fears that Iran intended to build nuclear weapons; and that the regime's enthusiasm had waned after the US invasion of Iraq, which was sparked by a misguided hunt for atomic components and other so-called weapons of mass destruction. Throughout this year, as the White House has ramped up its rhetoric against Tehran, urging increasingly tougher UN sanctions and occasionally beating a war drum, the US's 16 intelligence collection and assessment agencies have been trying to verify what Ashgari told them. The spies had been burned before by a defector - scorched, in fact. And serving up false information a second time around could lead to an irretrievable loss of public confidence in their ability to do their job.
An Iraqi who came knocking in Germany with alleged details about former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear and chemical weapons programs was instrumental in shaping the Pentagon and CIA's case for invading Iraq in 2003. The man, dubbed by the Americans as "Curveball", had been a walk-in to the German spy agencies. He had sold them on one chilling word, biowaffen, German for biological weapon. Only after the Saddam regime had fallen and Iraq had descended into civil war were the Western world's spies able to establish that Curveball was far from being who he claimed.

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The man who touted himself as a central figure to all of Saddam's wicked intent was a taxi driver, with no access to anything of the sort, even if it did exist. Much of what former secretary of state Colin Powell took to the UN Security Council as justification for the invasion, and of what former CIA chief George Tenet has described as a slam-dunk case, was based on the word of a fabulist. Curveball had damaged the Western spies like no other defector since the deepest, darkest days of the Cold War. And while there was no doubt about Ashgari's credentials, there was, for a while, a grave fear about his intentions. For several months, the CIA shared only scant details of what their prize had told them, even to close ally Israel, which, given the repeated direct challenges to its existence by Ahmadinejad, had more interest than anyone in finding out what he knew. He confirmed the regime had been building two nuclear plants in southern Iran, one in Arak and the other in Bushehr, and that both had been using centrifuges to enrich uranium. He also confirmed that both had at one stage been central to a broader goal of becoming the region's second nuclear state, after Israel. But that goal, he revealed, had been put on hold in late 2003, about six months after the US-led invasion of Iran's neighbour, Iraq. The Americans had demonstrated both their seriousness and intent when they rolled into Iraq and Iran had determined its ambitions could wait. After six months of cross-checking, then checking again, the once-burnt-twice-shy spies were ready to act on Ashgari's information. They were satisfied he was not an Iranian double-agent and that what he had told them was genuine. In August, director of US National Intelligence Mike McConnell made an appointment with President George W.Bush. He turned up with information that might have been difficult to digest for Bush, who at the time had committed his regime to an ever-increasing diplomatic siege and economic boycott of Iran and who pointedly held the threat of war over Ahmadinejad. McConnell outlined what was nothing less than an "about-face" from a national intelligence assessment two years earlier that had said "with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immoveable". The new estimate says the agencies "judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ... (and) assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons". Asked last week why he had stepped up the rhetoric against Iran even after he had received the surprise assessment, Bush said the information had to be checked again. Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, it has been hard to gather intelligence there. Since 2001, most of the West's intelligence arms have been focused on the threat posed by radical Sunni Islam from the Arab world. The Western spooks have had little more than a toe-hold in Iran and the radically different culture and language there has made it difficult to reconfigure the apparatus and resources to zero in on a closed community of scientists and regime loyalists that has proved almost impossible to crack.
That double check came back with a confirmation in late November. It was quickly passed on to key allies, including the Israelis. Bush and key staff personally briefed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak when both were in Washington for the Middle East peace summit at the time. The Israelis left Washington unsatisfied and their displeasure was still apparent during the week when the intelligence assessment was publicly released. Immediately afterwards, senior ministers took to the airwaves to rebuke, albeit politely, the American conclusions. "The bottom line is that words don't stop missiles; actions do," Barak said in response to the report. In a tacit acknowledgement of Ashgari's role in the report's conclusions, Barak said much of the Western world's intelligence on Iran had been "coming from one track". "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. There are differences in the assessments of different organisations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right. We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend." Israeli military officials who spoke anonymously to The Australian said: "No one can pretend that they have a lot of (intelligence) assets there. The difference between what we are doing and what the Americans, Germans and British are doing comes down to how we assess the information. It's not methodologies." Much of Israel's regional policy, defence spending, and even some domestic political platforms are focused towards Iran and the existential threat that many here feel the Islamic state poses. The Israeli airstrike against a suspected fledgling nuclear reactor in northern Syria in September sent an unambiguous message to Tehran, and the Israeli rhetoric ever since has removed any remaining doubt that the fighter jets would be sent in again - no matter the consequences. Much of the momentum that fell in behind the recent Annapolis peace summit, particularly the involvement of the Arab world, was due to a gathering bulwark against the perceived threat posed by Iran to the Sunni Arab world's interests. The fallout from the shift in position is yet to be felt across the Arab world, which had been becoming increasingly uneasy at an Iranian renaissance that many felt was taking on a revolutionary edge. By week's end, Barak had stated a new reality in the Middle East that has caught many here by surprise. When asked if the new intelligence assessment meant the chances of a pre-emptive attack against Iran had dropped, he said: "That's possible." Others in the Israeli administration were far more emphatic. "There's no way we'd do it alone," said one high-ranking official. "That's it. If the Iranians continue to down tools in their nuclear sites, there will not be a war."

And this is what the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC of IDIOTS apologist have to say about this subject

Is the Iran NIE a Trojan Horse? by Russ Wellen - December 9, 2007

The Iran NIE has elicited a range of emotions in those opposed to the Bush administration's policies from gloating to discreet celebration. In the minds of many, it's like V-Day: Let the church bells peal, kiss a girl in Times Square. Others, particularly Iranian commentators located in the US, are considerably less sanguine.
They fear, as Farideh Farhi writes at Juan Cole's spin-off, Informed Comment: Global Affairs, that the NIE can "easily become an instrument in support of the Bush Administration's current policy."In fact, according to Kaveh Afrasiabi at Asia Times Online, "The temporary freeze on the military option [resulting from] the new intelligence report has nested within it its exact opposite." In other words, a Trojan horse.Even though, he maintains, the nuclear programs that Iran halted in 2004-2005 were not weapons, the NIE and the administration painted them as such. If a follow-up report were to indicate that Iran planned to resurrect said weapons program, that would provide "ample justification for Washington's planned 'pre-emptive strikes' on Iran, not to mention added sanctions."Thus leaving "the pendulum capable of swinging in wildly different directions almost at will."Meanwhile, at CASMII (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Action Against Iran), Daniel Pourkesali writes, "Forgive this writer for being a spoiler." But he too finds that the resurrection theme is like a ticking time bomb embedded in the NIE.He mentions the "assertions on page 7 paragraph D [of the NIE] that 'Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to produce nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so.'"They leave "the door wide open for administration hawks like Mr. Cheney to abruptly accuse Iran of resurrecting its 'nuclear weapons program much as he did back in 2002, claiming that Saddam Hussein had 'resumed his effort to acquire nuclear weapons.'" In other words, the hawks are fixated on another bird, the phoenix.At NIAC (National Iranian-American Council), Trita Parsi explains how the administration further unrolls the rock before the resurrection justification. "Rather than adjusting policy on Iran in accordance to the reality-check provided by the NIE, the President moved the goal post on Iran."As the NIE declared that Iran likely doesn't have a weapons program, the President shifted the red line from weaponization to the mere knowledge of enriching uranium [which, of course] is not of a military nature and is permitted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.""The President also pointed out, as though to justify military strikes, that Iran's knowledge of the enrichment process would permit Tehran to have a clandestine program. [But, of course] a full suspension of the Iranian program would not eliminate the Iranian knowledge of the enrichment program and, as a result, the risk of a clandestine program would continue to exist."Unless, of course, the atomic scientists of Iran submitted to the erasure of their memories as if their minds were hard drives.Finally, Ms. Farhi comments on the "propitious convergence between the NIE and the Bush Administration's current policy and the timing of the release of this report," which was finished a year ago. (See Gareth Porter for a full explanation.)First she reminds us of Stephen Hadley's statement that "the President has the right strategy, intensified international pressure along with the willingness to negotiate. . . [and for it] to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran –- with diplomatic isolation, United Nations Sanctions, and with other financial pressure."Then she frets that "this NIE can so easily become an instrument in support of the Bush Administration's current policy." We'll allow Dr. Afrasiabi to be the last to rain on the parade. "The bottom line. . . [is that the US] has now pre-positioned itself for yet another disastrous gambit in the volatile Middle East."

Details in Military Notes Led to Shift on Iran, U.S. Says
By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN LEE MYERS Of the NewYork Times: December 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program, senior intelligence and government officials said on Wednesday. The notes included conversations and deliberations in which some of the military officials complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles.

The newly obtained notes contradicted public assertions by American intelligence officials that the nuclear weapons design effort was still active. But according to the intelligence and government officials, they give no hint of why Iran’s leadership decided to halt the covert effort. Ultimately, the notes and deliberations were corroborated by other intelligence, the officials said, including intercepted conversations among Iranian officials, collected in recent months. It is not clear if those conversations involved the same officers and others whose deliberations were recounted in the notes, or if they included their superiors. The American officials who described the highly classified operation, which led to one of the biggest reversals in the history of American nuclear intelligence, declined to describe how the notes were obtained. But they said that the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies had organized a “red team” to determine if the new information might have been part of an elaborate disinformation campaign mounted by Iran to derail the effort to impose sanctions against it. In the end, American intelligence officials rejected that theory, though they were challenged to defend that conclusion in a meeting two weeks ago in the White House situation room, in which the notes and deliberations were described to the most senior members of President Bush’s national security team, including Vice President Dick Cheney. “It was a pretty vivid exchange,” said one participant in the conversation. The officials said they were confident that the notes confirmed the existence, up to 2003, of a weapons programs that American officials first learned about from a laptop computer, belonging to an Iranian engineer, that came into the hands of the C.I.A. in 2004. Ever since the major findings of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program were made public on Monday, the White House has refused to discuss details of what President Bush, in a news conference on Tuesday, termed a “great discovery” that led to the reversal.Some of Mr. Bush’s critics have questioned why he did not adjust his rhetoric about Iran after the intelligence agencies began to question their earlier findings.In a statement late Wednesday, the White House revised its account of what Mr. Bush was told in August and acknowledged that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, had informed him new information might show that “Iran does in fact have a covert weapons program, but it may be suspended.”Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said Mr. McConnell had warned the president that “the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn’t be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data.” A senior intelligence official and a senior White House official said that Mr. McConnell had been cautious in his presentation to Mr. Bush in an attempt to avoid a mistake made in the months leading to the Iraq war, in which raw intelligence was shared with the White House before it had been tested and analyzed.“There was a big lesson learned in 2002,” the senior intelligence official said. “You can make enough mistakes in this business even if you don’t rush things.”In fact, some in the intelligence agencies appear to be not fully convinced that the notes of the deliberations indicated that all aspects of the weapons program had been shut down. The crucial judgments released on Monday said that while “we judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years,” it also included the warning that “intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate” led both the Department of Energy and the National Intelligence Council “to assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.”The account is the most detailed explanation provided by American officials about how they came to contradict an assertion, spelled out in a 2005 National Intelligence Estimate and repeated by Mr. Bush, that Iran had an active weapons program.Several news
organizations have reported that the reversal was prompted in part by intercepts of conversations involving Iranian officials. In an article published on Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times said another main ingredient in the reversal was what it called a journal from an Iranian source that documented decisions to shut down the nuclear program. The senior intelligence and government officials said a more precise description of that intelligence would be exchanges among members of a large group, one responsible for both designing weapons and integrating them into delivery vehicles.The discovery led officials to revisit intelligence mined in 2004 and 2005 from the laptop obtained from the Iranian engineer. The documents on that laptop described two programs, termed L-101 and L-102 by the Iranians, describing designs and computer simulations that appeared to be related to weapons work.Information from the laptop became one of the chief pieces of evidence cited in the 2005 intelligence estimate that concluded, “Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons.” The newly obtained notes of the deliberations did not precisely match up with the programs described in the laptop, according to officials who have examined both sets of data, but they said they were closely related.On Wednesday President Bush repeated his demand that Iran “come clean” and disclose details of the covert weapons program that American intelligence agencies said operated from the 1980s until the fall of 2003. Iran’s government, Mr. Bush said, “has more to explain about its nuclear intentions and past actions, especially the covert nuclear weapons program pursued until the fall of 2003, which the Iranian regime has yet to acknowledge.” Mr. Bush spoke at Eppley Airfield near Omaha, where a visit intended to showcase health care and to raise money for a Senate race was overshadowed by the furor caused by the National Intelligence Estimate and Iran’s taunting reaction to it. He faced calls from across the political spectrum for the United States to make a more concerted effort to negotiate with Iran, offering a package of incentives that could persuade it to suspend its uranium enrichment program and clear up concerns that it is building a civilian energy program to develop the expertise for a covert military program.“Bush has made a big mistake, and he’s not responding in a way that gives confidence that he’s on top of this,” said David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency and president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “He isn’t able to respond because he’s not able to say he’s wrong.” Mr. Bush, though, made it clear that there would be no immediate change in the United States’ approach, saying that the administration had already offered to talk, though on the condition that Iran suspend its current enrichment program first, as called for in two United Nations Security Council resolutions. Administration officials have said that they would continue to advocate tougher sanctions, which seems increasingly unlikely.

CIA has recruited Iranians to defect : By Greg Miller - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer - December 9, 2007

The secret campaign was launched two years ago to undermine Tehran's nuclear program. It has persuaded a 'handful' of key officials to leave.

The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say.The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain," is part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House two years ago.Intelligence gathered as part of that campaign provided much of the basis for a U.S. report released last week that concluded the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003. Officials declined to say how much of that intelligence could be attributed to the CIA program to recruit defectors.Although the CIA effort on defections has been aimed in part at gaining information about Tehran's nuclear capabilities, its goal has been to undermine Iran's emerging capabilities by plucking key scientists, military officers and other personnel from its nuclear roster.Encouraging scientists and military officers to defect has been a hallmark of CIA efforts against an array of targets since the height of the Cold War. But officials said those programs did not generally seek to degrade the target's capabilities, suggesting that U.S. officials believe Iran's nuclear know-how is still thin enough that it can be depleted.The program has had limited success. Officials said that fewer than six well-placed Iranians have defected, and that none has been in a position to provide comprehensive information on Tehran's nuclear program.The CIA effort reflects the urgency with which the U.S. government has sought to slow down Iran's nuclear advances, as well as the importance Washington attaches to finding human sources who can help fill intelligence gaps left by high-tech collection methods such as satellites and electronic eavesdropping equipment. The program was described by officials on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the effort.The White House ordered the stepped-up effort in hopes of gathering stronger evidence that Tehran was making progress toward building a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration "wanted better information" on Iran's nuclear programs, said a U.S. official briefed on the expanded collection efforts."I can't imagine that they would have ever guessed that the information they got would show that the program was shut down," the official said.That was the central finding of the comprehensive intelligence report released last week. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contradicted previous intelligence assessments and undercut assertions by the Bush administration.The new report, which represents the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, also concluded that Tehran "at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons" and continuing to pursue civilian nuclear energy technologies that could help it make a bomb.A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the effort to cultivate defectors, saying "the agency does not comment on these kinds of allegations as a matter of course."White House reversalThe administration's decision to step up intelligence collection on Iran in 2005 was a reversal from a position the White House took after President Bush was first elected. Former CIA officials said that the agency had built up a large Iran Task Force, made up of nearly 100 officers and analysts at headquarters, by the end of the Clinton administration. But that office shrank to fewer than a dozen officers early in the Bush administration, when the White House ordered resources shifted to other targets."When Bush came in, they were totally disinterested in Iran," said a former CIA official who held a senior position at the time. "It went from being a main focus to everything being switched to Iraq."Asked about decisions to reduce the size of the Iran Task Force, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "Iran has been an issue of priority to the United States for a long time. You shouldn't assume that a single unit of any size reflects the complete level of effort. That would be a mistake."Even as the task force shrank, officials said, other CIA units, including its counter-proliferation division, continued to track Iran's procurement networks and other targets.Some of that reduced task force capacity has been restored, former CIA officials said. Two years ago, the agency created an Iran division within its overseas spying operations, applying to a single country resources and emphasis usually reserved for multinational regions.The stepped-up effort went beyond the CIA, and has also involved the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on other countries' communications, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites.The defector program was put in place under CIA Director Porter J. Goss, who has since left. The agency compiled a list of dozens of people to target as potential defectors based on a single criterion, according to a former official involved in the operation: "Who, if removed from the program, would have the biggest impact on slowing or stopping their progress?"The rewards for defectors can be substantial, including relocation to another country and lifetime financial support.In the two years since it was launched, the program has led to carefully orchestrated extractions of a small group of Iranian officials who operated in the mid- to upper tiers of the Islamic Republic's nuclear programs.None of those who defected was considered essential to the nuclear program, nor were they able to provide comprehensive descriptions of Iran's efforts, officials said."Did they have replacements for these people? Any country would have," the former official involved in the operation said. "But we did slow the program."The identities of the defectors have been carefully protected. However, there was speculation this year of CIA involvement in the apparent defection of a former Iranian deputy defense minister, Ali Reza Asgari, who went missing in February during a visit to Turkey.At the time, Iran's top police chief was quoted in the official news agency as saying that Asgari probably had been kidnapped by operatives working for Western intelligence services. Asgari was believed to have extensive knowledge of Iran's conventional weapons program as well as its ties to the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in Lebanon.But Asgari was not thought to be involved in Iran's nuclear program, and the CIA, when pressed by congressional officials about the matter, adamantly denied involvement in the Iranian general's disappearance.Officials declined to discuss the whereabouts of the defectors, or details regarding the methods used to approach them. The former senior U.S. intelligence official said that potential defectors had not been approached directly by the CIA, but through other contacts the agency has cultivated inside the country.Often, the former official said, there are as many as "three degrees of separation" between agency personnel and those targeted for approach, and that each of those interim contacts had to be thoroughly vetted before a planned approach was approved. Those who have left Iran have been debriefed and relocated either by the CIA or with the help of allied intelligence services, the former official said.The CIA program was implemented after significant debate between the White House and the agency over its size and scope, officials said. National Security Council officials urged the CIA to make the program as broad as possible, and to spread word through Iranian networks that the United States was prepared to help officials leave the country and relocate.But CIA officials fought to keep the program narrowly targeted to avoid catching the attention of Iran's intelligence service. Even at that, CIA officials assumed that Iran's service was keeping close watch on key officials in the nuclear program, and that potential defectors could be decoys.The "Brain Drain" program is among the latest in a long series of efforts to shore up U.S. intelligence on Iran. It was launched at a time when a presidential commission was preparing a scathing report on the inadequacies of U.S. intelligence on Iran and other nations suspected of having nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.U.S. intelligence officials said the information that surfaced this summer prompting the reevaluation of Tehran's nuclear weapons program centered on intercepts of Iranian government officials' conversations and the seizure of a journal that contained notes documenting the country's decision to shut down its weapons research.During a briefing with reporters last week, a senior U.S. intelligence official said that Iran was "the hardest intelligence target there is.""I mean, by comparison, North Korea is an open and transparent society," the official said.History of setbacksU.S. intelligence on Iran has been beset by setbacks stretching back more than two decades. The CIA has had no permanent presence in the country since the United States broke diplomatic ties with the country -- and removed embassy personnel, as well as CIA officials who operated under diplomatic cover -- after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.Afterward, the agency began recruiting sources in Europe and elsewhere, in cities where there are large populations of Iranian expatriates who travel to and from the country. But the effort has been marked by failures.In 1989, Iran's intelligence services broke up a network of agents in the country that was being directed by a CIA station in Germany known as "Tefran," for Tehran-Frankfurt. When that station was shut down, much of the collection work was shifted to Los Angeles, where there is a large population of Iranian immigrants, many of whom visit their home country.

Rough Estimates What US intel Missed in Iran Nukes
December 11, 2007 New York Post Amir Taheri

WHATEVER its merits in terms of reliable information on Iran's nuclear ambitions, the new US National Intelligence Estimate has something for everyone. President Bush can cite it in support of his contention that the Islamic Republic had been lying about its nuclear program for years and that at one point Iran had been engaged in building a bomb. And Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can use the new NIE in support of his no-compromise stance against the American "Great Satan." For more than two years, he has been telling Iranians to ignore American threats and UN Security Council resolutions and pursue the nuclear program as a national priority. The Democratic majority in Congress will find the NIE useful for its desire to tie Bush's hands as tightly as possible. The Europeans, along with the Russians and the Chinese, will use the new report to comfort themselves that they can stop worrying about the prospects of Khomeinism obtaining a nuclear arsenal. The NIE also offers the U.S. "intelligence community" a chance to improve its badly tarnished image. It received a lot of flak for having reported that Saddam Hussein was still busy building weapons of mass destruction in 2002. Having learned its lesson, the "community" now offers the kind of product that the market wants: a cocktail of ambiguity, wishful thinking and pious hope.
The new NIE is problematic on several accounts. To start with, its methodology remains a mystery. It seems to rely heavily on minutes of secret conversations between senior Iranian military leaders and their political bosses in Tehran. That, of course, opens the possibility of disinformation: Isn't it possible that the Khomeinist leadership in Tehran cooked up the whole thing to confuse its enemies? One possible source for those memoranda was a senior Iranian diplomat who, according to Ahmadinejad, contacted the British and provided them with "top-secret material" on Iran's nuclear program. But why would the diplomat do that - and why should that same diplomat be arrested and then quickly exonerated of all charges?
Alternately, what if Gen. Reza Asgari who defected to America - or, according to one version, was abducted by the Americans last year - was a mole sent by Tehran to provide Washington with false minutes of the supposed conversations?
The possibilities for political spin, not to mention concocting yarns of espionage, are simply endless. The estimate doesn't change the fact that Tehran has always claimed and continues to assert with great self-confidence that it never had a secret program. Thus, this is not a case like South Africa, Libya or North Korea - all of which admitted the existence of their respective nuclear programs before undertaking to scrap them. The NIE could do a great deal of harm in a number of ways. It may confirm the already widespread illusion that intelligence can be a substitute for policy. That would enable the political leadership to avoid even debating a credible policy on dealing with the Khomeinist regime. The NIE could shift, and to some extent has shifted, the focus of the debate from a possible threat from Iran to the time at which President Bush learned about the so-called "new facts." That, in turn, could add fuel to US self-flagellation while encouraging professional anti-Americans across the globe.
As I have written before, Tehran's policy has never been aimed at actually making a nuclear weapon. From the late '60s (even before the Khomeinists seized power) it has aimed at acquiring what's called a "nuclear surge capacity." This means having the knowledge, technological base, infrastructure and raw material needed to make nuclear weapons in a short time - without actually making the bomb. It's like someone who builds a kitchen and assembles the ingredients to make a soup at any moment - but decides not to do so for the time being. Acquiring "surge capacity" was a key part of the late shah's overall strategy and has remained a pillar of Iran's defense doctrine. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stopped the nuclear program in 1979 along with many of the shah's projects - but it was restarted long ago by President Hashemi Rafsanjani and has been pursued with varying degrees of vigor by his two successors. How far has it gotten? As far as scientific knowledge and technological base are concerned, Iran has made great strides. It is also building the industrial structures needed through the centrifuge-making plants at Natanz and possibly Isfahan. For the needed raw materials, it is proceeding with its uranium-enrichment program. So, the kitchen is built and the ingredients for the soup fast assembled. But no one can come up with a lawyer-proof case that the Khomeinists are actually building a bomb. But when, and if, such a case becomes possible, it may be too late. This is the beauty of aiming at a "surge capacity." With the Americans settling scores with one another and the Europeans dancing around the issue, the Islamic Republic under its new radical leader is surging ahead to achieve the late shah's ambition. It's this fact that many might wish to ponder, not the Byzantine subtleties of an NIE crafted to please everyone. It's certainly foolish to cry wolf where none is around. But it could be suicidal to pretend there can be no wolf where one may come along.

سخنرانی احمدی نژاد در باره دانشگاه کلمبیا و جاسوس هسته ای
سخنان امامی کاشانی در نماز جمعه امروز تهران

سخنرانی امروز (چهارشنبه) احمدی نژاد در ایلام