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Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb
U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration
Statements
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
08/02/05 "Washington
Post" -- -- 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.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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