Review Finds Iran Far From Nuclear Bomb
Estimate of Progress Contrasts With Administration Statements
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A01
A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade
away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly
doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government
sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S.
intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the
White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered
proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The
new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its
nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis
resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."
The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence
community views as credible indicators that Iran's military is conducting
clandestine work. But the sources said there is no information linking
those projects directly to a nuclear weapons program. What is clear is
that Iran, mostly through its energy program, is acquiring and mastering
technologies that could be diverted to bombmaking.
The estimate expresses uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics
have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said.
Still, a senior intelligence official familiar with the findings said that
"it is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own
devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons."
At no time in the past three years has the White House attributed its
assertions about Iran to U.S. intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the
run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of
Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran
would require a large-scale nuclear energy program.
The NIE addresses those assertions and offers alternative views supporting
and challenging the assumptions they are based on. Those familiar with the
new judgments, which have not been previously detailed, would discuss only
limited elements of the estimate and only on the condition of anonymity,
because the report is classified, as is some of the evidence on which it
is based.
Top policymakers are scrutinizing the review, several administration
officials said, as the White House formulates the next steps of an Iran
policy long riven by infighting and competing strategies. For three years,
the administration has tried, with limited success, to increase pressure
on Iran by focusing attention on its nuclear program. Those efforts have
been driven as much by international diplomacy as by the intelligence.
The NIE, ordered by the National Intelligence Council in January, is the
first major review since 2001 of what is known and what is unknown about
Iran. Additional assessments produced during Bush's first term were narrow
in scope, and some were rejected by advocates of policies that were
inconsistent with the intelligence judgments.
One such paper was a 2002 review that former and current officials said
was commissioned by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who was
then deputy adviser, to assess the possibility for "regime change" in
Iran. Those findings described the Islamic republic on a slow march toward
democracy and cautioned against U.S. interference in that process, said
the officials, who would describe the paper's classified findings only on
the condition of anonymity.
The new estimate takes a broader approach to the question of Iran's
political future. But it is unable to answer whether the country's ruling
clerics will still be in control by the time the country is capable of
producing fissile material. The administration keeps "hoping the mullahs
will leave before Iran gets a nuclear weapons capability," said an
official familiar with policy discussions.
Intelligence estimates are designed to alert the president of national
security developments and help guide policy. The new Iran findings were
described as well documented and well written, covering such topics as
military capabilities, expected population growth and the oil industry.
The assessments of Iran's nuclear program appear in a separate annex to
the NIE known as a memorandum to holders.
"It's a full look at what we know, what we don't know and what assumptions
we have," a U.S. source said.
Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February testimony by Vice
Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to be
within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995,
U.S. officials have continually estimated Iran to be "within five years"
from reaching that same capability. So far, it has not.
The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely
to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key
ingredient for an atomic weapon, before "early to mid-next decade,"
according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the
shift, based on a better understanding of Iran's technical limitations,
puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British
and Israeli figures.
The estimate is for acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm
view expressed on whether Iran would be ready by then with an implosion
device, sources said.
The timeline is portrayed as a minimum designed to reflect a program
moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles. It does not
take into account that Iran has suspended much of its uranium-enrichment
work as part of a tenuous deal with Britain, France and Germany. Iran
announced yesterday that it intends to resume some of that work if the
European talks fall short of expectations.
Sources said the new timeline also reflects a fading of suspicions that
Iran's military has been running its own separate and covert enrichment
effort. But there is evidence of clandestine military work on missiles and
centrifuge research and development that could be linked to a nuclear
program, four sources said.
Last month, U.S. officials shared some data on the missile program with
U.N. nuclear inspectors, based on drawings obtained last November. The
documents include design modifications for Iran's Shahab-3 missile to make
the room required for a nuclear warhead, U.S. and foreign officials said.
"If someone has a good idea for a missile program, and he has really good
connections, he'll get that program through," said Gordon Oehler, who ran
the CIA's nonproliferation center and served as deputy director of the
presidential commission on weapons of mass destruction. "But that doesn't
mean there is a master plan for a nuclear weapon."
The commission found earlier this year that U.S. intelligence knows
"disturbingly little" about Iran, and about North Korea.
Much of what is known about Tehran has been learned through analyzing
communication intercepts, satellite imagery and the work of U.N.
inspectors who have been investigating Iran for more than two years.
Inspectors uncovered facilities for uranium conversion and enrichment,
results of plutonium tests, and equipment bought illicitly from
Pakistan -- all of which raised serious concerns but could be explained by
an energy program. Inspectors have found no proof that Iran possesses a
nuclear warhead design or is conducting a nuclear weapons program.
The NIE comes more than two years after the intelligence community
assessed, wrongly, in an October 2002 estimate that then-Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was reconstituting his
nuclear program. The judgments were declassified and made public by the
Bush administration as it sought to build support for invading Iraq five
months later.
At a congressional hearing last Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy
director of national intelligence, said that new rules recently were
imposed for crafting NIEs and that there would be "a higher tolerance for
ambiguity," even if it meant producing estimates with less definitive
conclusions.
The Iran NIE, sources said, includes creative analysis and alternative
theories that could explain some of the suspicious activities discovered
in Iran in the past three years. Iran has said its nuclear infrastructure
was built for energy production, not weapons.
Assessed as plausible, but unverifiable, is Iran's public explanation that
it built the program in secret, over 18 years, because it feared attack by
the United States or Israel if the work was exposed.
In January, before the review, Vice President Cheney suggested Iranian
nuclear advances were so pressing that Israel may be forced to attack
facilities, as it had done 23 years earlier in Iraq.
In an April 2004 speech, John R. Bolton -- then the administration's point
man on weapons of mass destruction and now Bush's temporarily appointed
U.N. ambassador -- said: "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much
longer, it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons."
But the level of certainty, influenced by diplomacy and intelligence,
appears to have shifted.
Asked in June, after the NIE was done, whether Iran had a nuclear effort
underway, Bolton's successor, Robert G. Joseph, undersecretary of state
for arms control, said: "I don't know quite how to answer that because we
don't have perfect information or perfect understanding. But the Iranian
record, plus what the Iranian leaders have said . . . lead us to conclude
that we have to be highly skeptical."
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080101453.html
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