"We are strongly convinced that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in autumn 2003." In view of this declaration, which has caused so much damage, the efforts to track down weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq now seem absurd: the real WMD were located rather nearer the White House, specifically in Langley, on the outskirts of Washington DC.

 

By considering Iran’s nuclear programme to have been halted, the NIE has called an end to a great number of things. First and foremost is George W. Bush’s policy of suffocating the Teheran regime by exercising greater political pressure and imposing stricter sanctions. Sources within the President’s circle that claim that the NIE demonstrates the need to maintain the pressure on the Ayatollahs simply reflects their vain attempts to salvage what they can. Whether we like it or not, the time has come for the Bush Administration to end its rhetoric of confrontation. The approach of “al options are on the table” is no longer tenable.

 

Second, the NIE has stripped the White House of its main reason for pushing for further sanctions on the UN Security Council. If securing these sanctions was always going to be a tricky matter, now the balance has clearly swung in favour of those who advocate a more conciliatory approach to Teheran. Very soon the Russians will authorise the delivery of fissionable material for the Busher reactor and nobody will be able to firmly oppose them.

 

Third, the NIE has blown away the incipient intra-European consensus regarding policy towards Iran. Whilst London and Paris had remained united in their belief that it was necessary to continue punishing the Ayatollah regime in economic, financial and technological terms, Germany, the European country that has the strongest trade links with the Islamic Republic, has never been that enthusiastic about imposing further sanctions. Now it is going to be a true diplomatic challenge to encourage Berlin to back a policy based on a firm approach.

 

The NIE will also have a negative affect on the project to set up an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The purpose of this shield, as Washington has insisted time and again, is not to fend off the Russian nuclear arsenal, but to handle quantitatively inferior threats... such as a long-range Iranian missile. In view of the political cost of this operation, especially in terms of public image, not to mention the friction it has caused with Russia, it is more than doubtful that things will be the same as they were before the new NIE was announced. The same could be said for the debate within the heart of NATO regarding the urgent need to extend the tactical anti-missile system so that it encompasses European territories and populations and so that its compatibility and integration with the American system can also be promoted. The NIE’s verdict is that the costs would be too high for too little in return.

 

And what about the damage that has been inflicted on the President’s own image? George W. Bush has been shown to be incapable of controlling his own bureaucracy, leaving him high and dry with a hard-line approach that no longer has any basis. What will be the reaction of America’s new and enthusiastic allies, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, who has become the standard-bearer of the sanctions policy almost overnight? What will the Arab countries think who reluctantly attended the Annapolis Summit because they were more frightened of Iran than Israel? And what will the Israelis now think, who certainly do not share the assessment made by American intelligence?

 

For those who believe the CIA and agree with the NIE because it supports their strategy of attacking and defeating Bush, things are looking up. But the situation is black, very black, for those who believe the NIE is mistaken. Only the United States is capable of doing something to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, but this no longer seems to be a feasible option. Thus, Teheran will have the opportunity, after all, of finishing its bomb. Israel may not accept the situation, because its very existence depends on resisting it, but it is not going too far to assume that other Gulf nations will seek to come to a rapid understanding with the Ayatollahs. This could mark the end of the policy that the West has pursued in the region for decades. Even more so if Israel finds impossible to avoid a nuclear Iran and embarks itself in a Mutual Assured Destruction policy, a risky redux of the East-west Cold War.

 

The NIE is a veritable political bombshell. This is not only because of the damage it is going to cause and the damage it has already caused, but because it is a document that only makes sense in its capacity as a political recommendation. The intelligence community is assuming the authority to dictate the course of desirable action: it has ceased to serve Government and become the driver behind Government’s approach. This is a situation that cannot be sustained, however familiar it may sound in countries such as ours.

 

The murky intelligence services, who have no direct responsibility to the public and operate with very loose controls, must not cease to serve as an instrument to those the public has chosen to represent them. Intelligence must inform the decisions taken by political leaders, not supplant them.

 

What is more, we should bear in mind that the intelligence services never have a complete picture of the true situation. In fact, the CIA, which is perhaps the largest organisation for gathering and analysing information on the planet, has shown on numerous occasions that it is unaware of many important and serious developments. For example, it knew nothing about the Pakistani nuclear programme until Islamabad decided to detonate five of its atomic devices in a row, as part of a scientific test that also served as a show of strength. Neither was it aware of the scope, extension and development of the WMD programme in Libya. We hardly need to mention the question of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and as  recognised now, they new very little about Iran just two years ago, when the previous NIE was realeased.

 

Since Washington and Teheran severed relations in 1979, American intelligence has not been exactly overwhelmed with reliable information sources in Iran. In fact, the State Department even dismantled its Iranian section some years ago and has only recently reassembled it. Throughout all the intervening years, technical information gathering media have prevailed over human sources. In this respect, how can the CIA now claim what it claims with such conviction?

 

It is not very probable, if not downright impossible, that the CIA has managed to infiltrate one of its agents into the clandestine Iranian nuclear programme. It is more probable that it has resorted to what are known as “walk-ins,” which is to say, defectors. During the Cold War, this was customary practice in order to obtain information about the Soviet bloc. However, the flow of deserters from the Arab-Muslim world does not seem to be especially strong. In the embarrassing case of Iraq, the CIA studied one hundred reports, but they all came from the same source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who told the Americans what they wanted to hear time and again.

 

We would assume that the CIA has introduced a series of more sophisticated filters, but maybe it has not. In fact, it has been accused of once again depending on a single source of information in order to draw up its new NIE. The CIA has sought to sidestep these criticisms by pointing to a widespread brain-drain from the Iranian nuclear programme, a development to which nobody attaches the slightest reliability... Many things are said about the CIA, only half of which should be believed. But we should believe less than half of the things the CIA says itself.

 

The worst aspect of the NIE is its brazen cheek. Everyone has focused on its reference to the alleged interruption of Iran’s clandestine nuclear programme in 2003; but nobody has noticed the footnote that appears on the first page, in which the authors of the document are forced to recognise that they are only talking about the nuclear weapons programme, not the nuclear programme itself. That is to say, they only tackle a matter they actually know about (and that Iran has systematically denied) and ignore the question that is currently being debated on the Security Council: uranium enrichment and the manufacture of plutonium. The authors of the NIE are the only observers who fail to see a connection between the two. What is more, the NIE makes its assertions within the context of an absolute vacuum, failing to taking into account the Iranian context or make reference to any other Iranian activities, such as the country’s advanced missile developments.

 

Thus, the NIE fails to tackle any of the important issues. The world has not imposed sanctions on Iran for what it suspects the country has been doing behind it back, but for what it has been doing quite openly. Iran does not need to enrich uranium on the scale on which it wishes to do so, and neither does it have any right to pursue such a policy in view of the international obligations it has contracted. What its thousands of centrifuges seek to produce is the fissionable material required to obtain atomic weapons. And this is where the problem resides: Iran has refused, and continues to refuse, to accept any formula that prevents it from shifting from an exclusively civil programme to a military programme overnight.

 

But the NIE says nothing about this. For some bizarre reason, it simply states that Teheran abandoned its atomic military programme back in 2003. But because it does not really know the reasons why this happened, it cannot claim either that the Ayatollah’s intentions have changed or that these intentions might not be rekindled in the future. What the authors of the NIE are sure about (and, by the way, the authors include three of Bush’s staunchest critics) is that Iran halted its bomb programme in autumn 2003.

 

The former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has labelled the NIE a veritable coup d’état. These are harsh words indeed, but they also highlight the need to strengthen the Government’s control over the secret services, who always seek to assert their independence. Whatever the case may be, the most serious consequence of the affair is that the NIE has left the United States and its allies entirely defenceless against an increasingly arrogant Iran.

 

When this NIE turns out to be as mistaken as its previous versions, it will already be too late to halt the Ayatollahs’ ambitions. And, thanks to the CIA, that day will come sooner rather than later.