Washington: Iran has frozen nuclear development

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-iran.html?ex=1354338000&en=acc00e93bbfadd09&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies “do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is designed for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.

But the new estimate declares with “high confidence” that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt “was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”




Maybe we aren't on the brink of World War III, like many thought, after all.

 

Damn, The Idiot in Chief is gonna be pissed. Now he can't invade Iran and his Wolrd War III comment looks even more stupid.

 

This is good news.

 

Amen.

 

Great news. Even better that it came out.

 

Wonderful news, indeed, if true.

 

Waiting a while longer before delving into THAT . . . glad you brought it up.

 

Good news, yes.
But if there has been no nuclear weapon program since 2003 why has the piece of shit in the White House been using his typical scare tactics right up until last week.
Sorry, folks, but I never considered Iran a threat to launch any nukes at us and since this now proves to be fact, we should all be even more pissed off at the biggest lying piece of shit ever to occupy the White House.

When is this crumb going to be held accountable?

 

This NIE was apparently finished a year ago, and its basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House well before that. This means that all the leaks, all the World War III stuff, all the blustering about the IAEA — all of it was approved for public consumption after Cheney/Bush/Rice/etc. knew perfectly well it was mostly baseless.

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/09/5117/

 

What hasn't been revealed is that Iran assigned some newspaper publishers to develop their nuclear program... hence, the freeze.

 

Bravo, sir. Bravo.