To be sure, the first reaction to the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is simple relief — the Bush administration is less likely to launch a unilateral, pre-emptive military strike against a nuclear program that doesn’t exist.
But then there are the second and third reactions, which are nearly as important in providing context. Matt Yglesias, for example, reminds us that in 2003, Iran reached out to the U.S. in order to strike a sweeping peace deal, which would have led the country to give up on a nuclear program that they then-realized would be too hard to develop. Bush wasn’t interested.
“To meet the U.S. concern about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, the document offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for ‘full access to peaceful nuclear technology.’ It proposed ‘full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD’ and ‘full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols).'”
“There have been some efforts to discredit what [Gareth] Porter, Flynt Leverret, and others have said about this attempted opening, but the NIE’s conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program seem to strongly support it. With their secret enrichment activities exposed, the Iranian regime was reconsidering the utility of continuing such efforts in the face of international awareness and disapproval of them. The Bush administration then decided to squander this opportunity and focus on saber-rattling and dreams of regime change. But the thing about pressure is that you’ve got to be willing to take yes for an answer instead of just blundering around.”
Which leads us to the other easily-overlooked point from today’s news: Bush and his team have making a lot of claims about Iran, most of which were apparently patently false.
Remember, today is when the unclassified synopsis of the NIE was released, but the White House has had the full NIE at their disposal all year — but that didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from trying to scare the bejeezus out of the country.
TP assembled some startling examples of “faulty, inflammatory rhetoric”:
“The problem is Iran, and Iran has not stepped back from trying to pursue a nuclear weapon, and — or reprocessing and enriching uranium, which would lead to a nuclear weapon.” [White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, 10/26/07]
“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.” [Bush, 11/7/07]
“We’re in a position now, clearly, especially when we look at Iran, where it’s very, very important we succeed in our efforts, our national security efforts, to discourage the Iranians from enriching uranium and producing nuclear weapons.” [Cheney, 11/9/07]
“We are convinced that they are developing nuclear weapons.” [Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, 11/13/07]
It’s one thing to get a national security and foreign policy challenge wrong — Bush and his gang are probably used to that — but these comments were made after the administration had assembled an NIE that made clear that Iran hasn’t had a nuclear program in four years.
That’s the difference between a lie and a mistake — saying something that’s wrong, which one knows to be wrong at the time.