Questionable intelligence on Iran
by Salim Mansur
The recent release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report on Iran’s nuclear program has been received by critics of the Bush administration as vindication of their insistence that Iran poses no threat to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region and beyond.
The problem with the NIE – all signs point to a nuclear Iran.
The key judgment — Tehran halted its nuclear program in the fall of 2003 — is surrounded by extensive qualifications indicating difficulties in assessing Iranian nuclear intentions, and that the NIE “does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.”
In refusing to make such an assumption, the intelligence community does not tell the world, as the French and German leaders now fear in their public statements, why Tehran invested in a nuclear program until 2003.
[More]But then American intelligence does not deny what the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have indicated to the world, that Tehran remains engaged in the enrichment of uranium.
The distinction between “military” and “civilian” uses of enriched uranium is artificial since an unmonitored civilian program carries the risks of being used for military purposes.
Since this NIE report reverses its earlier assessment on Iran’s nuclear program, it raises more questions than it answers about the business of intelligence and understanding of Iranian political culture.
Intelligence is murky business. It is akin to trying to draw meaning from shadows, or reading tea leaves in a moving stream.
American intelligence, unlike that of other countries, has a history of spectacular failures in misreading events, or being surprised by unexpected events.
Perhaps the most spectacular failure of the United States was in misjudging how soon the former Soviet Union ended America’s nuclear monopoly in August 1949 by testing its own atomic weapon.
Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded George Koval — an American-born Soviet spy — with the highest honour of the Russian state for successfully providing critical information on the U.S. Manhattan project during the Second World War.
The story of George Koval, code-named Delmar and trained by Stalin’s ruthless spy masters, tells us how greatly unaware American intelligence was about the U.S.’s most secret war program — the building of the atomic bomb — being penetrated by a Communist agent.
On Iran, U.S. intelligence has been disastrously wrong. It had no clue of revolution erupting when president Jimmy Carter toasted the late Shah in Tehran on New Year’s Eve 1978 for making Iran “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.”
Since then terror-exporting and radical Islamic Iran, established by Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers in 1979, remains mostly a black hole for American intelligence.
Moreover, assessing the intentions of Iranian decision makers is a beguiling task since tactics of intentionally misinforming or blatantly lying is sanctioned by the Shiite practice of “taqiyyah” (dissembling or concealing truth).
The NIE judgment about Iran halting its nuclear program in 2003 is stated without evidence or reason. Could it be that this occurred — if it did — because of regime change in Baghdad?
But the world witnessed in December 2003 the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, publicly dismantle his covert nuclear weapons program, and it was unmistakable that he had drawn a cautionary lesson from Saddam Hussein’s fall.
Hence, prudence dictates and demands remaining skeptical over intelligence on Iran.
Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. He is an associate author of highly acclaimed Shariah: The Threat to America and the publisher of over a dozen other books and monographs from the Center for Security Policy Press.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving U.S.-USSR relations, nuclear forces, arms control, missile defense policy and U.S.-European defense ties. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by the late Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003), the Western Conservative Summit’s Stephen H. Long Award (2015), the Council for National Policy’s George Washington Military Leadership Award (2016) and the IMPACT Award from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose (2017).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
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