The White House and its political allies have been less than subtle in saber-rattling towards Iran over the last year or so, specifically emphasizing the threat posed by a nuclear-weapons program that doesn’t exist. Yesterday’s conclusions from the National Intelligence Estimate make clear that for attack-Iran-now conservatives, it’s back to the drawing board.
Obviously, as a matter of national security, the NIE revelations are excellent news. But as a political matter, it’s left the right dazed and confused. What do they do with this encouraging information?
As far as I can tell, there are three principal reactions, ranging from merely wrong to you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me wrong.
* The Manchurian CIA: This approach, embraced by Rudy Giuliani’s chief national security advisor Norman Podhoretz, argues that the NIE is not only wrong about the Iranian threat, but is actually part of a massive deception, launched by the Central Intelligence Agency to protect Iran.
“I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, ‘with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.'”
Remember, this guy will not only shape a President Giuliani’s foreign policy, he also boasts “there is very little difference” between how he and the former mayor perceive policy towards Iran.
* Blame Iranian “disinformation”: OK, so the collective assessment of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Iran stopped its nuclear-weapons program more than four years ago, but maybe that’s because Iran wants us to think that and leaked bogus intel to throw us off track.
Bush threw cold water on this argument this morning.
“Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it’s not disinformation. You want to make sure the piece of intelligence you have is real. And secondly, they want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered: If they think it’s real, then what does it mean? And it wasn’t until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.”
Remember Iraq: Fine. The CIA probably isn’t secretly working for Iran, and the intelligence probably isn’t the result of an Iranian disinformation campaign. But can we really trust intelligence agencies to get Iran right after they screwed up Iraq? The WaPo’s Howard Kurtz offered this argument yesterday.
I would just make a note about the attribution in the lead: “senior intelligence officials said Monday.” They may well be right. But some intelligence officials were obviously flat wrong about Saddam’s WMD.
There are quite a few problems with this approach. First, I wouldn’t say the intelligence community was “flat wrong” about Iraq; I’d say the IC offered the Bush White House plenty of warnings and caveats, and the Bush gang cherry picked the information it liked best.
Second, it’s one thing to treat the NIE with some skepticism, but dismissing it like this is foolish. As Ezra noted, “Anyone can be wrong. The first page of the estimate explains the various probabilities attached to the various predictions, and all of them leave open a window (or a door, or a planet) of doubt. Does Kurtz have any reason to think that the NIE is wrong?”
And third, it’s worth remembering that when intelligence officials first started reporting over the summer that the Iranian nuclear-weapons program no longer existed, the White House pushed back, causing the intelligence community to make absolutely certain.
Several of those involved in preparing the new assessment said that when intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration on the intercepts, beginning in July, the policymakers expressed skepticism. Several of the president’s top advisers suggested the intercepts were part of a clever Iranian deception campaign, the officials said.
Intelligence officers then spent months examining whether the new information was part of a well-orchestrated ruse. Their effort included “Red Team” exercises in which groups of intelligence officers tried to punch holes in the new evidence, substantially delaying publication of the NIE.
Sorry, conservatives, the NIE is right. Try not to look too disappointed by the good news.