By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
December 3, 2007
WASHINGTON - First Iraq, now Iran. The United States has operated
under a cloud of faulty intelligence in both countries.
In a bombshell intelligence assessment, the United States
has backed away from its once-ironclad assertion that Tehran
is intent on building nuclear bombs.
Where there once was certainty, there now is doubt. "We
do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear
weapons," the new estimate said Monday.
Compare that with what then-National Intelligence Director
John Negroponte told Congress in January. "Our assessment
is that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons."
Just last month, President Bush, at a news conference with
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said, "We talked about
Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian
regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the
sake of peace."
More ominously, Bush told a news conference Oct. 17, "I've
told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War
III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing
them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear
weapon."
Asked then if he definitely believed that Iran wanted to build
a nuclear bomb, Bush said, "Yeah, I believe they want
to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear
weapon."
Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said the president
made comments like those "because he was describing the
threat as the intelligence community itself had been describing
the threat both publicly and in their briefings to him."
Intelligence officials advised Bush several months ago that
they were reevaluating their assessments about Iran. They came
to the White House last Wednesday and briefed him on their
new findings.
The intelligence flip-flop recalled the embarrassing reversal
that Bush was forced to make on whether Iraq possessed weapons
of mass destruction. The conviction that Saddam Hussein had
such weapons was one of the factors behind Bush's decision
to invade Iraq. It since has been determined that Iraq did
not have weapons of mass destruction.
Democrats on Monday did not hesitate to suggest an Iran-Iraq
comparison.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats had requested
the new Iran assessment "so that the administration could
not rush this Congress and the country to another war based
on flawed intelligence."
"I hope this administration reads this report carefully
and appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy vis-a-vis
Iran," Reid said. "The administration should begin
this process by finally undertaking a diplomatic surge necessary
to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran."
In the case of Iran, though, the White House has not dropped
its suspicions that Tehran could pursue a nuclear bomb.
Iran continues to develop, test and deploy ballistic missiles,
and its civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing. "It
can readily use the same technology to produce weapons-grade
uranium," Hadley said.
In rewriting the conclusions about Iran, the new estimate
said Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program but halted
that effort in the fall of 2003 under the weight of international
pressure. Importantly, the estimate said Iran has not restarted
the nuclear bomb program.
"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program
suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than
we have been judging since 2005," the new estimate said.
While key facts have changed, the administration's strategy
has not.
The White House says it will continue to try to build pressure
on Iran to prevent it from ever acquiring nuclear bombs.
"The bottom line is that for that strategy to succeed,
the international community has to turn up the pressure on
Iran with diplomatic isolation, United Nations sanctions and
with other financial pressure," Hadley said. "And
Iran has to decide that it wants to negotiate a solution."
Some analysts believe the new conclusions will be a roadblock
for Vice President Dick Cheney and other hawkish members of
the administration to be more confrontational toward Iran.
"It's a good thing that we caught this before we marched
headlong into another military conflict," said Jon Wolfsthal,
senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington. "This isn't the timebomb the administration
made it out to be for the last several years."
Wolfsthal said the conclusion that international pressure
prompted Iran to halt its program "is the piece of information
that we missed in Iraq" where Bush believed that Iraq's
pursuit of WMD was continuing despite sanctions. He said the
administration did not appear inclined to change its strategy
toward Iran. He said that "suggests they can't take yes
for an answer."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Terence Hunt has covered the White House
for The Associated Press since the Reagan administration.
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