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The Devaluation of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian Threat

[Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University] Ephraim Kam - Since the publication of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian threat, its impact has been progressively devalued. This devaluation can be attributed, first of all, to the fact that the American administration, along with leading European governments and Israel, continued to stress the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat. Secondly, the NIE report ran into a storm of criticism by professional echelons in Israel, Europe and the U.S. itself. That criticism prompted Thomas Fingar, the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council that drafted the NIE, to admit in March 2008 that the Council did not assume that the report would be published and that if it had believed otherwise, it would have formulated the estimate somewhat differently. Thirdly, the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency in February 2008 about Iran included voluminous information about procurement and attempted procurement of components critical to the development of nuclear explosive devices.
2008-03-27 01:00:00
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