Most of the world experienced a collective sigh of relief recently when the Bush administration released the conclusions of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and the collective judgment of U.S. intelligence officials is that Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program more than four years ago. Without an imminent nuclear threat, the neocon dream of a military confrontation with Iran seemed effectively off the table.
Of course, that’s only true if the president is willing to take the NIE seriously. There’s growing evidence that he is not.
[I]n private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.
Bush’s behind-the-scenes assurances may help to quiet a rising chorus of voices inside Israel’s defense community that are calling for unilateral military action against Iran. Olmert, asked by NEWSWEEK after Bush’s departure on Friday whether he felt reassured, replied: “I am very happy.” A source close to the Israeli leader said Bush first briefed Olmert about the intelligence estimate a week before it was published, during talks in Washington that preceded the Annapolis peace conference in November. According to the source, who also refused to be named discussing the issue, Bush told Olmert he was uncomfortable with the findings and seemed almost apologetic. […]
Bush’s national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters in Jerusalem that Bush had only said to Olmert privately what he’s already said publicly, which is that he believes Iran remains “a threat” no matter what the NIE says. But the president may be trying to tell his allies something more: that he thinks the document is a dead letter.
What I can’t quite wrap my head around is the notion that the president has “views” that differ significantly from his own intelligence reports. If the NIE on Iran is based on available evidence, and Bush has decided to “all but disown” the NIE, what, exactly, serves as the basis for his “views”?
Yes, that is a rhetorical question.
On a related note, the WSJ has a fascinating piece today (that is available to non-subscribers) about how the behind-the-scenes rivalries played out in the creation of the NIE. As the Journal’s Jay Solomon and Siobhan Gorman explained, career officials won for a change, while Cheney lost.
As President Bush arrives in Saudi Arabia today, America’s Arab and Israeli allies have been buzzing about the recent sea change in Washington’s perception of Iran. The December report by the U.S.’s top spy office stating Iran had abandoned its effort to build nuclear weapons was one of the biggest U-turns in the recent history of U.S. intelligence.
Behind the scenes in Washington, it marked a reversal of a different sort: After years in which Bush appointees and White House staff won out on foreign-policy matters, career staffers in the intelligence world had scored a big victory.
The authors of the Iran report — career officials in the intelligence and diplomatic corps — are among the same people who were on the losing side of the Iraq and Iran debates during the first Bush term. In 2002, some argued that Iraq didn’t have an active nuclear-weapons program. They were sidelined by the more-hawkish foreign-policy strategists on the Bush team.
Now, the more-cautious intelligence camp is grabbing the reins…. In the case of the Iran report, the about-face was made possible in part by a 2004 restructuring that gave intelligence chiefs more autonomy. New procedures for vetting and authenticating reports also helped insulate analysts from White House involvement.
Obviously, this is a positive development, which produces more reliable and less politicized intelligence.
But if the president rejects reality because it doesn’t “reflect his own views,” the big victory won’t amount to much.