Iran has no nuke program, U.S. intel says

[DinoDoc]

Re: Re: Iran has no nuke program, U.S. intel says

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What's that I smell? Oh yeah, it's the level smell of "I TOLD YOU SO!"

I thought you were against putting pressure on Iran (which this report seems to ironically make more difficult) despite evidence of it working.

[BeBMan]

Didn't read the thread, just curious: since when do we trust the CIA?

[Whaleboy]

Would it make the conservative American posters more happy if Iran did have a nuke programme?

[Sirotnikov]

Not the best intelligence

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/931688.html

Not the best intelligence
By Avner Cohen

WASHINGTON - It is difficult to recall a precedent in which a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), whose unclassified findings total only 2 to 3 percent of the full classified document, led to a political earthquake like the one created by the release of the NIE about Iran's nuclear ambitions this week.

Such unclassified reports are a relatively new phenomenon in Washington, and they should be welcomed. But they are problematic when they involve a document that does not clarify in any way how and why its authors reached their conclusions, yet presumptuously attempts to provide decision-makers with public political advice.

Above all, this NIE - which apparently came after months of internal discussions by all 16 organizations that comprise the American intelligence community - has struck a fatal blow to the administration's diplomatic efforts to bring sanctions against Iran.

The document reflects the American intelligence community's aspiration to reassert its professional and intellectual independence. It states, to both the American public and an international audience, that the intelligence fiasco that led the United States to the Iraq war will not be duplicated in the case of Iran. The intelligence community is making it clear that it will not countenance abuse of its own products. Moreover, it is asserting its unwillingness to be led to war again by a small group of neoconservative ideologues who have commandeered the country's foreign and security policies and distorted intelligence findings to serve their ideology. Some in Washington claim that Condoleezza Rice is the one who believed - and apparently persuaded the president - that it was important to go public with the new NIE, even if only partially, in order to prevent the administration from taking military action against Iran.

None of these explanations, which probably contain some grain of truth, can account for the political miscalculation of releasing the material now. In fact, military action against Iran was not on the agenda for the near future, but the NIE clearly has stuck a spanner in the works regarding sanctions on Iran.

The community of nuclear experts in Washington, including many of us who oppose military action against Iran, were shocked at the methodologically shallow, confusing and unprofessional way that many of the NIE's findings were formulated. Some believe that the intelligence officials, with Rice's assistance, have taken upon themselves the patriotic task of saving Bush from himself.

In any case, this document's flaws and political naivete are unprecedented. For example, the report notes that Iran suspended or halted the working groups building the bomb, but creates the false impression that this was the main component of Iran's nuclear weapons development program. The report obfuscates the reality of Iran's massive nuclear effort, in particular its enrichment program. Instead, it states that since autumn 2003, Iran has made no continuous effort to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Even if the revelation that weaponization was halted in 2003 is genuine (and not intentionally misleading on Iran's part), the document is puzzling, because it is known that manufacturing and stockpiling fissionable material determine how close a country is to the bomb. Furthermore, the public report does not state how much nuclear engineering progress Iran had made through 2003; the suspension may have been one aspect of some form of coordination between this activity and the production of fissionable material.

In general, the unclassified NIE gives no hint as to how and why American intelligence has decided to ascribe such a high degree of credibility to this finding. The report states with legalistic caution that Iran apparently could amass enough fissionable material to build a nuclear weapon between 2009 and 2015, if it were to decide to do so. To all this is added an (unexplained) note stating that the earlier date is not practical. However, to make such a general statement, it is not necessary to amass costly secret intelligence material; it is enough to read the documents of the International Atomic Energy Commission. As an intelligence assessment, this is a vague statement of no value to decision-makers.

The NIE says nothing about critical matters touching on understanding the Iranian nuclear program. It does not report what the American intelligence community knows or does not know about what motivates Iran's grandiose nuclear plans, especially the enrichment program; how national decisions in Iran are made about the nuclear program; what the connection is between Iran's nuclear and missile programs (since the costly missile program has no logical purpose without a connection to nuclear warheads); or how external political pressure can influence Iran's nuclear activity.

It is understandable that the report reveals nothing directly regarding U.S. intelligence's capability to quickly pinpoint significant developments and changes in Iran's nuclear program. But indirectly, it is clear that American capability is feeble in this critical realm. The report itself provides proof of this. If one assumes that the American intelligence community recognized only last summer that some four years ago, Iran suspended or halted its work on weaponization, it is clear that the United States' aptitude in the realm of intelligence is suboptimal.

If the American intelligence community seeks to provide the public with an understanding of Iran's nuclear program, this report proved flimsy.

[i]
Dr. Avner Cohen, author of "Israel and the Bomb," is a senior research fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.[i]

Bio for Avner Cohen

[Sirotnikov]

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/071206.htm

Iranian Nuclear Program Remains Major Threat Despite Partial Freeze of Weapons-Relevant Activities Described in New U.S. National Intelligence Estimate

Despite a December 3, 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate assessment that Iran's "nuclear weapons program" was halted in 2003, serious concerns remain.
Leonard S. Spector, CNS Deputy Director (Washington, DC)

December 6, 2007

On December 3, 2007, the U.S. National Intelligence Council released an unclassified summary of the newest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities." Although the assessment states that the US Intelligence Community has "high confidence" that Iran's "nuclear weapons program" was halted in 2003 and that the halt lasted for "at least several years," the document makes clear that the halt applied only to one facet of Iran's activities relevant to the development of nuclear arms. Moreover, other statements in the document, along with extensive evidence in the public domain, suggest that other activities relevant to the possible production of nuclear weapons continue. There are thus strong reasons for on-going concern about the future direction of Iran's nuclear activities. These concerns call for continued international pressure on Iran to curtail its work on uranium enrichment and plutonium production — technologies that can produce nuclear explosive material — and to permit more intensive inspections of its nuclear program to ensure it is not used to produce nuclear weapons.


Background

Programs to develop nuclear weapons have a number of essential components. A state seeking such weapons must:

• Design the weapon and all of its nuclear and non-nuclear component parts;


• Produce the nuclear explosive material that forms the core of a nuclear weapon;


• Manufacture the components and assemble the weapon;


• Prepare a system for delivering the weapon, usually a specially equipped warplane or a missile.

Most programs also include provision for testing the weapon, although this is not considered a requirement for developing a first-generation nuclear device akin to those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Traditionally, these various efforts are conducted in parallel, and, as a rule, acquiring the necessary nuclear explosive material is considered the most difficult task.

Iran is developing a sizeable uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the capabilities of this facility have steadily advanced. Currently 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges are operating at Natanz, although not consistently, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA monitors the facility as required under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Iran is a party. Tehran claims it is building this plant to produce low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plant fuel, but the facility could also produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) suitable for nuclear weapons. The unclassified NIE summary states with "moderate confidence" that Iran "probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame." Iran is also constructing a heavy-water moderated reactor at Arak, which is well suited for producing plutonium which can also be used as fissile material for a nuclear weapon. At the moment, it appears that the Iranian enrichment program is more advanced than the country's plutonium production program; the unclassified NIE summary does not speculate as to the completion date for the latter capability.


Timeline

In mid-2002, an Iranian opposition group revealed that for the previous 18 years, Iran had pursued a clandestine program to enable it to produce nuclear weapon material, a program that had not been declared to the IAEA as required by the NPT. Subsequently, a series of facilities were linked to that effort and, under international pressure, Iran agreed to place them under IAEA monitoring, including the Natanz and Arak facilities. It was understood that prior to the construction of these units, Iran had pursued a range of related research and prototype development activities. In addition, through the IAEA inspection process and through revelations in early 2004 and afterwards regarding the nuclear smuggling network led by Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, it became known that Iran had received assistance from Khan beginning in 1985 on the development of a uranium enrichment capability, assistance that may have included a nuclear weapon design and which is known to have included instructions on machining HEU into hemispheres. The only known use for such hemispheres is in the core of nuclear weapons.

The clandestine effort started in 1985 is the baseline against which the NIE's statement concerning the 2003 halt in Iran's "nuclear weapons program" needs to be understood. The newest NIE states:

For the purposes of this Estimate, by 'nuclear weapons program' we mean Iran's nuclear weapon design and weaponization and covert uranium conversion and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion [at Isfahan] and enrichment [at Natanz].[1]

Thus, the statement in the NIE that Iran halted its "nuclear weapon program" in 2003 means that of the four essential components of a nuclear weapon program, the Estimate states with high confidence only that nuclear weapon design/component preparation and clandestine, small-scale activities related to production of nuclear explosive material were halted in 2003. Moreover, the NIE qualifies the point by stating that these activities were halted "for at least several years" and that the intelligence community has only "moderate confidence" that the activities were not restarted as of mid-2007; both findings leave open the possibility that the "halt" may have been only a "pause," and that the activities in question may have restarted.

Far more disturbing, however, are the nuclear-weapon-relevant activities that Iran is known to have actively pursued since 2003:

• Although Iran agreed under international pressure in November 2004 to suspend work on uranium enrichment, in August 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's newly elected hardline president, vowed to restart the program. Iran began converting uranium for use in the Natanz plant that month and restarted operations at Natanz in January 2006. Since then, it has been aggressively enlarging the Natanz facility, even in the face of international sanctions imposed under UN Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747.[2] Ahmadinejad, who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth" and denies the Holocaust, claims the program is intended for the production of nuclear reactor fuel. Iran, however, has only one nuclear power plant—the Bushehr reactor&mdashder construction and none on order. The reactor under construction is being built by Russia, which is under contract to supply all of the fuel for the lifetime of the facility. (The Arak reactor will use unenriched uranium). Thus, if the Natanz facility were intended for production of reactor fuel, its output would not be needed for at least a decade, raising questions as to why Ahmadinejad is rushing to complete it and exposing Iran to UN sanctions in the process.


• Although Iran's nuclear-weapon design and weaponization work and clandestine enrichment and uranium conversion activities may have halted in 2003, the country has actively pursued other clandestine efforts to advance its nuclear and missile programs since that time, specifically the illicit acquisition of components and equipment via smuggling rings active in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, and the United States, among other countries.[3]


• Iran's development of missiles powerful enough to carry nuclear warheads considerable distances also continued during this period, in particular extending the range of the Shahab-3 to 1,300 kilometers. Tested most recently during a military exercise in November 2006, the system is based on the North Korean Nodong missile and is able to strike Israel. Historically, every state that has developed missiles of this range or greater has sought to arm them with nuclear warheads. Also in 2006, Iran is reported to have purchased a 3,000-kilometer-range system from North Korea, known as the Musudan, and to have tested the missile in January of that year.[4] Finally, Iran reportedly is preparing to test an indigenously produced solid-fueled ballistic missile, called Ashura, with a range of 2,000 to 2,500 km.[5]

In parallel with these activities, and in defiance of international demands, Ahmadinejad has curtailed IAEA access to Iranian nuclear sites. Beginning in 2003 — the same year Iran suspended work at Natanz and, according to the NIE, halted weaponization work — Iran had voluntarily granted the agency augmented inspection rights as specified in an amendment, known as the Additional Protocol, to its basic inspection agreement with the agency; Iran first signed the amendment in December 2003 and then implemented it even though the document was not yet ratified. Iran then granted the agency still further authority to interview Iranian scientists and review documents relevant to its nuclear program. Since his election, Ahmadinejad has systematically rescinded these privileges, slowly blinding the agency. Although the IAEA continues to implement its basic inspection rights, in his most recent report to the IAEA Board of Governors, the Agency's Director General Mohammed ElBaradei stated that, "...the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran without full implementation of the Additional Protocol. This is especially important in the light of Iran's undeclared activities for almost two decades and the need to restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program."[6]

Even if Iran has halted one facet of the work necessary for the production of nuclear weapons, it has vigorously pursued other activities essential to achieving this goal and has done so under the most suspicious circumstances — defying UN resolutions, exploiting international smuggling networks, developing missiles apparently designed for nuclear delivery, and restricting IAEA monitoring. All of these activities, moreover, accelerated after the advent of a new Iranian president with a radical international agenda. While Ahmadinejad may not have had final authority over Iran's nuclear policies, he has wielded considerable influence with those who did.


Conclusion

What comes next? Since Ahmadinejad took office, Iran has reversed key decisions of his predecessors to suspend uranium enrichment work at Natanz and to expand IAEA inspection rights. Will he also oppose continuing the halt on weaponization work? With the IAEA restricted and the United States, according to a senior Israeli official, having lost its crucial source of information on the weaponization effort, he may well believe these activities can be restarted without detection.[7]

The scenario of greatest concern at the moment is that once Iran is able to produce quantities of low-enriched uranium, it will build a stockpile of the material and, if it has not done so by this point, finish designing the bomb and building its non-nuclear components. It would then be in a position to withdraw from the NPT (as North Korea did in January 2003) and then upgrade its stocks of enriched uranium to weapons grade and fabricate complete nuclear weapons, steps that might be completed in a matter of months. With the NIE indicating that Iran could have the necessary weapons material sometime between 2010 and 2015, the threat of such a "break out" may not be a distant one.

The danger of a nuclear armed Iran thus remains very real indeed. The United States, its partners on the UN Security Council, and others, such as Germany and the EU, who have played leading roles in the attempt to constrain Iran's nuclear capabilities have every reason to sustain their efforts and must do so, in particular, by taking the next step in the process: imposing a third round of sanctions on Iran, while holding out the possibility of negotiations to ease the current impasse. Ahmadinejad's hardline cohorts face parliamentary elections early in 2008 and, as international economic sanctions have intensified, his intransigence on Iran's nuclear program has been the subject of growing domestic opposition. The international community needs to maintain pressure on Iran to change course and must not be deflected by taking greater comfort from the NIE than it actually provides.

---

Sources:
[1] Uranium conversion is the process by which natural uranium oxide or "yellowcake" is converted into gaseous uranium hexafluoride, the material that is processed in uranium enrichment centrifuges.

[2] For a recent analysis of developments at the Natanz plant, see David Albright and Jacqueline Shire, "A Witches' Brew? Evaluating Iran's Uranium-Enrichment Progress," Arms Control Today, November 2007, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_11/Albright.asp.

[3] See, e.g., "U.S. Nonproliferation Sanctions Against China and/or Chinese Entities," Nuclear Threat Initiative website, http://www.nti.org/db/china/sanclist.htm, noting repeated imposition of sanctions on Chinese firms since 2003 for transfers to Iran of items on international control lists; Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Nilsu Goren, "Iran Exploited Turkish Trading Firm to Produce Dual-Use Goods from Western European, U.S. Companies," WMD Insights, July/August 2006, http://www.wmdinsights.com/I7/I7_ME3_IranExploited.htm; Adam P. Williams, "German And U.K. Investigations Target Nuclear Exports To Iran," WMD Insights, September 2007, http://www.wmdinsights.com/I18/I18_E...teGermanUK.htm.

[4] Peter Crail, "Iran Missile Tests Heighten International Concerns," WMD Insights, December 2006/January 2007, http://www.wmdinsights.com/I11/I11_ME1_IranMissile.htm; Daniel Pinkston, "North Korea Displays Ballistic Missiles During Military Parade, Some for First Time," WMD Insights, June 2007, www.wmdinsights.com/I16/I16_EA1_NKDisplays.htm.

[5] Alon Ben-David, "Iran Adds Ashura to Missile Line-Up," Jane's Defense Weekly, December 5, 2007.

[6] Report by the Director General, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) in the Islamic Republic of Iran," GOV/2007/58, November 15, 2007, http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Doc...gov2007-58.pdf.

[7] Steven Erlanger and Isabel Kershner, "Israel Insists That Iran Still Seeks a Bomb," December 5, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/wo...ref=washington.

from his bio:

Mr. Leonard S. Spector is Deputy Director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and leads the Center's Washington D.C. Office. In addition he serves as editor-in-chief of the Center's publications. Mr. Spector joined CNS from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), where he served as an Assistant Deputy Administrator for Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

His principal responsibilities at DOE included development and implementation of DOE arms control and nonproliferation policy with respect to international treaties; US domestic and multilateral export controls; inspection and technical cooperation activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency; civilian nuclear activities in the US and abroad; initiatives in regions of proliferation concern, including the canning of plutonium-spent nuclear fuel in North Korea and Kazakhstan; and transparency provisions of bilateral agreements with Russia covering the purchase of weapons-grade uranium and the cessation of plutonium production. Additionally, Mr. Spector managed the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention and the Nuclear Cities Initiative programs.

[...]

Mr. Spector has participated on the Senior Advisory Panels at the Sandia National Laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Research Council of the American Academy of Sciences. He has also served as Secretary and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Henry L. Stimson Center and he is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington, DC Bar. Mr. Spector holds a J.D. degree from Yale Law School and an undergraduate degree from Williams College.

His many publications include: Tracking Nuclear Proliferation 1995: A Guide in Maps and Charts (with Mark McDonough and Evan Medeiros, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1995); Nuclear Ambitions: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 1989-1990 (Westview Press, 1990); The Undeclared Bomb: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 1987-1988 (Harper Business 1990).

[chequita guevara]

Israel wants us to bomb Iran for them. Big surprise there.

[Wezil]

That is exactly what I thought.

Looks like Israel is going to have to go alone on this one.

[Wezil]

Israel isn't ready to give up on the idea...

JERUSALEM - Israel has dispatched an unscheduled delegation of intelligence officials to the U.S. to try to convince it that Iran is still trying to develop nuclear weapons - contrary to the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence report, security officials said.

But while Israel was trying to convince Washington that Iran remains a nuclear threat, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scolded a Cabinet minister for his harsh, public criticism of the U.S. report.

The U.S. assessment, released earlier this month, concludes Iran halted its weapons development program in 2003 and that the program remained frozen through at least through the middle of this year. The findings reversed a key conclusion from a 2005 intelligence report that Iran was developing a bomb.

Israeli officials fear the report will weaken international resolve to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions.

It was not clear what type of material the Israeli delegation - for the most part military intelligence officers - presented to U.S. officials. The Israeli delegation hoped to receive additional information from the U.S. report, which for the most part was classified, the Israeli officials said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

The Israeli delegation set off for the U.S. last week and will wind up its visit this week, the officials said.

The U.S. and Israel will hold additional formal meetings on the matter in coming weeks, the Israeli officials said. Israel will use these forums to try to persuade the Americans that Iran is trying to development nuclear weapons, and to present top secret Israeli intelligence material, the officials said.

Before Sunday's regularly scheduled Cabinet meeting, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told reporters that Israel was in contact with the U.S. on the report, "to try to better understand its intelligence content, and to examine the public and political implications."

Israeli intelligence experts have concluded that Iran did in fact suspend its atomic weapons development in 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the security officials said. But Israel is convinced the Iranians set up a new production line whose details aren't known fully to Western intelligence agencies, they said.

Israel considers the regime in Tehran to be its biggest threat because of its nuclear ambitions, its long-range missile program and repeated calls by its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to wipe Israel off the map.

Iran says its nuclear program is designed to produce energy.

Olmert recently insisted in a high-profile speech that Iran hasn't abandoned its attempts to develop a nuclear weapon. But at Sunday's Cabinet meeting, he indirectly rebuked Public Security Minister Avi Dichter for publicly criticizing the report as a "misconception" that could lead to a surprise regional war.

"Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat," Dichter - a former head of Israel's internal security agency - said in a speech Saturday.

Without mentioning Dichter by name, Olmert instructed Cabinet ministers to refrain from issuing personal opinions on the report, his office confirmed.

"These utterances don't advance the campaign against the Iranian nuclear program and don't improve relations with the U.S.," Olmert said.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2007/12/15/4726306-ap.html