(HOST) President Gerge W. Bush said earlier this week that the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program doesn’t change anything. Commentator Barrie Dunsmore respectfully disagrees.
(DUNSMORE) The National Intelligence Estimate released this week said that America’s sixteen intelligence agencies had reached a consensus that they had "high confidence" that Iran had halted work on its nuclear weapons program four years ago. This conclusion is of huge importance on many levels. In 2005, these same agencies came to a directly opposite verdict — that "Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons."
This complete reversal was due to some significant new secret information obtained this past summer — as well as a re-examination of previous intelligence. One can’t help but suspect that the analysts were tryin to atone for the dismal quality of American intelligence that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Needless to say, the new report hit the White House like a tsunami. The President and his top advisors are struggling mightily to recover some semblance of their credibility — as this new estimate undermines their repeated assertions in the past few months that Iran is an imminent nuclear threat. Mr. Bush maintains that nothing has changed — that Iran remains a serious threat because it continues to enrich uranium, which is the principal component of a nuclear weapon. And he adds, the Iranians may have already secretly re-started the program that was frozen four years ago.
While that may be true — what has changed is that, based on this new assessment, the Bush administration should find it impossible to sell a new war with Iran to the American people — or to the rest of the world. Russia and China are now less likely to go along even with further economic sanctions on Iran.
One place where the new analysis is viewed skeptically is Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak says he accepts that Iran may have stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. But he is convinced they have secretly re-started it and are still trying to build a nuclear bomb.
However, not all Israelis are fearful of Iran — in spite of threats by its President to wipe Israel off the map. In a little-noted interview with David Ignatius in the Washington Post in October, Efraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, said the following about the Iranian threat: "I believe that Israel is indestructible. Israel has a whole arsenal of capabilities…. They [meaning the Iranians] are deterrable."
What Mr. Halevy is saying is that Israel’s own formidable nuclear arsenal is a credible deterrent against Iran. This career intelligence officer, who headed the Mossad for five years until 2003, also called on both the United States and Israel to tone down the war talk and to seek a dialogue with Iran. In his words, "We must be much more sophisticated and nuanced in our policies toward Iran."
While there is no sign such advice is yet being heeded here or in Israel, at least the new National Intelligence Estimate should effectively put a halt to the march to another war.
Barrie Dunsmore is a veteran diplomatic and foreign correspondent for A-B-C News, now living in Charlotte.