Undermisestimating

According to a declassified, and indeed ambitiously publicized report -- launched by Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, from a White House press conference, Monday -- the U.S. now thinks Iran's ayatollahs gave up their nuclear weapons programme sometime in 2003. At least, that is the conclusion of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which melds reports from sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies. This is big news, whether or not the findings are true.

...This leaves two options in responding to the latest findings on Iran, for journalists holding fixed points of view. The first is to assume that no mortal enemy of the U.S. ever has any WMD, and therefore the Yankee spies are right at last, on the stopped-clock principle. The other is to assume that U.S. intelligence estimates are always wrong, in which case, we had all better duck.

...The U.S. intelligence agencies appear to be alone in their current Iran assessment, except for Russia, which has long maintained Iran's intentions are peaceful, while earning huge sums building much of the nuclear infrastructure in question. Israel, for instance, is scratching her collective head, and the current Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak -- not a warmonger, but the Labour party man who as prime minister tried to give east Jerusalem away at Camp David but failed -- said this to Israeli Army Radio: “It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program.”

We do not know the sources for the revelation about 2003: that part is naturally classified. I speculate that the Iranians went to some trouble to document such a transient decision, made in a moment when the U.S. and allies appeared more threatening than they do now, and then fed the material to the West through multiple, and therefore mutually confirming, channels. I, for what my judgement is worth, think it so obvious that a regime of Iran's nature, and with Iran's means, and Iran's connexions, is pursuing nuclear weapons, that I will hardly be persuaded to the contrary, even by an entire football stadium full of Stephen Hadleys.