Washington: Iran has frozen nuclear development

[User 1019]

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.

 

[spnited]

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.

 

[zimbabwe]

This is good news.

 

[User 1019]

Amen.

 

[zeke12]

Great news. Even better that it came out.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Wonderful news, indeed, if true.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Seymour Hersch essentially wrote this in the New Yorker 2 or 3 months ago. And he had people on the record saying the administration still had plans to overstate what Iran is up to with its enrichment program, scare people into believing they are days away from having bombs, and invade. Not sure how this gibes with that.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Seymour Hersch essentially wrote this in the New Yorker 2 or 3 months ago. And he had people on the record saying the administration still had plans to overstate what Iran is up to with its enrichment program, scare people into believing they are days away from having bombs, and invade. Not sure how this gibes with that.

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

 

[spnited]

Good news, yes.
But if there has been no nuclear weapon program since 2003 why has the piece of **** 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 **** ever to occupy the White House.

When is this crumb going to be held accountable?

 

[ifilus]

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 **** 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/

 

[Gold]

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

 

[Chi City 81]

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

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

 

[Chuck~Taylor]

But what about the yellow cake?

 

[Football_Bat]

My guess is Dim Son will look for something else to blow up before he leaves office.

Iran? Ooops, doesn't have nukes and never did, apparently.

Venezuela? Ooops, turns out it really IS a democracy.

Madagascar must be getting nervous.

 

[HejiraHenry]

But what about the yellow cake?

It's tasty when topped with chocolate icing.

 

[zeke12]

But what about the yellow cake?

That was the Iraq fakery.

Entirely different deal.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

Even if Iran developed nukes, they'd never get over here. They would get to Israel and parts of Europe. But that's it.

 

[Pilot]

Even if Iran developed nukes, they'd never get over here. They would get to Israel and parts of Europe. But that's it.

Thank goodness for buffer states, eh?

Really though, is there any finding this panel could have had where you guys would have said "Ah, score one for Bush."

No. If they find they did have weapons programs, then Bush ****ed up and didn't pull the right strings to get rid of them or stop them. If they didn't have the programs, Bush is an ass for saying they might have them all along.

You all seem so sure, so I honestly am asking: how do we know Bush's years of tough talk and saber rattling haven't helped deter Iran? Other than the fact that we don't like Bush, of course.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

At times I have a bit of an isolationist streak in me. It conflicts with my more charitable, soft-hearted ways, but it's there.

It probably wouldn't surprise many if Iran DID have weapons. But again, they wouldn't be able to get here, and it might provoke Europe (as anti-semetic as they can be) to remain as vigilant as they have been.

And at the start, Bush's saber rattling per se was good in that it even got Iran to cooperate with us re: Afghanistan. But after the cluster**** in Iraq, Iran knows damn well there isn't much we can really do. Hence, their involvement and meddling in Iraq.

 

[Bubbler]

You're drawing conclusions before you get the answers, Pilot.

But since you asked ...

If you want to make the case Bush's aggressiveness was a deterrent, fine, but I don't buy it. If anything, I think it's been an accelerant as far as the renewed animosity between Iran and the U.S.

It's so easy to forget that before the U.S. went into Supress The Muslims mode, we had cooperation or at least ambivalence from many of these countries, including Iran when it had its moderate government. Our ****-swinging, brutish foreign policy probably contributed to Iran's Rafsanjani-led moderate government being voted out in '05.

And yes, I said voted out, it's also easy to forget that Iran isn't a dictatorship, though it does have oligarchic aspects, no matter how visible Ahmadinejad is. He's essentially the Asian Hugo Chavez. He does not have final say over foreign policy either.

Personally, I feel no more worried about Iran having nukes than Pakistan or even India. As mentioned, even if they had a nuke program, they were a decade away from having any kind of delivery system, even a short-range one.

North Korea's nuke program is of much more concern than any one country, but they sit next to China and within Russia's sphere of influence, so Bush doesn't do his saber-rattling bull**** with them, other than to include them in that idiotic axis of evil.