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The National Intelligence Estimate Fantasy

[Wall Street Journal] Bret Stephens - In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group revealed that Iran had an undeclared uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and an undeclared heavy water facility at Arak - both previously unknown to the U.S. intelligence community. Since then, the U.S. has labored to persuade the international community that all these facilities have no conceivable purpose other than a military one. Those efforts paid off in successive UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iran suspend enrichment because it was "concerned by the proliferation risks" it posed. Along comes the NIE to instantly undo four years of diplomacy, using a semantic sleight-of-hand to suggest some kind of distinction can be drawn between Iran's bid to master the nuclear fuel cycle and its efforts to build nuclear weapons. It's certainly plausible Tehran may have suspended one aspect of the program - the aspect that is the least technically challenging and that, if exposed, would offer smoking-gun proof of ill intent.
2007-12-11 01:00:00
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