Clandestine
Aims Of NIE Report
By Parviz Esmaeili
06 December, 2007
Tehran
Times
The
latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program
was released on Monday and caused various reactions.
The report
by the U.S. intelligence community is the consensus view of all 16 U.S.
spy agencies, including the CIA.
Unfortunately,
in Iran many people hastily responded positively, and even some government
officials expressed the view that the report was favorable to Iran.
This case
is similar to the recent report by International Atomic Energy Agency
Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, which was called totally positive.
However,
like always, ElBaradei's report gave short shrift to Iran's cooperation
and the transparency of its nuclear activities but highlighted the alleged
ambiguities cited by Western intelligence agencies and their unsubstantiated
accusations.
In any case,
the issue is not over the contents of ElBaradei's report, because the
IAEA director general's claim that the process of Iran's cooperation
with the agency is slowing down should have given Iranian officials
a signal to be more cautious in evaluating the Arab diplomat's five-page
report.
Now the U.S.
intelligence agencies' report is being treated in the same hasty and
offhand manner as ElBaradei's report was.
Although
it is expected that the heavy challenges of the past few years would
have made our diplomacy more proficient, it seems that the rashness
in adopting stances, the novice diplomatic moves, and the misanalysis
of the nature of such reports will cause some problems for us in the
future.
What is the
content of the U.S. intelligence report?
The intelligence
agencies' report can interestingly be divided into evaluations with
"high confidence" and "moderate confidence".
The conclusions
that are made with high certainty are:
"In
fall 2003 (September), Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."
Attention:
The abovementioned time is exactly after an agreement was made with
three European countries, and Iran suspended its uranium enrichment
activities.
Moreover,
contrary to what was declared in ElBaradei's recent report (which indicated
the Islamic Republic's nuclear program had been peaceful), the U.S.
intelligence report referred to an IAEA report that was issued on September
24, 2005 in which ElBaradei had violated the agency's regulations by
stating that the UN Security Council was authorized to investigate Iran's
motives behind 18 years of concealment!
In this way,
ElBaradei created a pretext for referring Iran's nuclear dossier to
the UN Security Council, and he was then immediately appointed to serve
a third four-year term as IAEA director general.
While the
nuclear watchdog states that it has not observed any non-peaceful nuclear
activities, the U.S. intelligence agencies have evaluated Iran's nuclear
program to be of a military nature, so that, unlike a technical approach,
this political evaluation would influence public opinion.
"The
halt, and Tehran's announcement of its decision to suspend its declared
uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily
in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure…"
In this way
they are trying to justify their decision to pressure Iran and implying
that the country is not committed to the agreements.
"Until
fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction
to develop nuclear weapons."
This big
lie is not mentioned in any of the IAEA reports and is only an allegation
made by the United States.
"Since
fall 2003, Iran has been conducting research and development projects
with commercial and conventional military applications"; "Iran's
civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing"; "Iran
will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough
plutonium for a weapon before about 2015"; and "Iran has the
scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce
nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."
These sentences
suggest that the pressure that was put on Iran, under the leadership
of the U.S. government, has been successful in halting the country's
efforts to produce nuclear weapons and thus should be continued.
The conclusions
that were stated with "moderate confidence" are:
"Tehran
at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons";
"Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007,
but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons";
"Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon"; "Iran
probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU (highly
enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame";
and "Iran probably has imported at least some weapons-usable fissile
material, but… it has not obtained enough for a nuclear weapon."
But what
are the unusual points of the report?
The timing
for the release of the NIE is noteworthy.
ElBaradei's
report, which was released on October 30, 2007, states that some of
the ambiguities should be cleared up through the modality plan devised
by Iran and the IAEA.
In addition,
China, Russia, and even other permanent members of the UN Security Council
and Germany have made it very clear to the United States that they adamantly
believe that only diplomatic methods should be used in the nuclear standoff.
However,
it is also important to examine their definition of diplomacy. We suppose
that diplomacy means interaction through dialogue in order to reach
an understanding, but in the conception of diplomacy of some members
of the 5+1 group, any tool can be utilized to exert pressure except
Article 42 of the United Nations Charter and the military option.
Moreover,
after the Republicans lost the midterm congressional elections and the
inconclusive occupation of Iraq, the people of the United States became
weary of war. Even former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton has
talked about the need to revise the U.S. war policy.
In such a
situation, the following points are significant:
(1) It seems
that the time to release the report was deliberately chosen to influence
public opinion in the United States and other countries in order to
validate the policies of U.S. President George W. Bush.
Bush's policies
have in fact failed, and thus a scenario had to be devised which could
turn a loser into a winner.
Is it a coincidence
that immediately after the report was released, U.S. National Security
Advisor Stephen Hadley said that the NIE supported Bush's strategy of
piling pressure on Iran?
(2) Apparently,
another objective that the report seeks is to strengthen those who favor
imposing sanctions on Iran by pretending that the U.S. is being logical
and realistic in regard to the current nature of Iran's nuclear program
and is avoiding the military option.
This means
it was meant to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, while
the U.S. is not capable of handling a military confrontation with Iran,
it can act as if avoiding the military option is a voluntary move by
the neoconservatives and thus will obtain concessions from Russia, China,
and also its domestic opponents.
On the other
hand, the U.S. can use the report in its efforts to create an international
consensus on the need to impose more illegal and unilateral sanctions
on Iran.
Acknowledging
this strategy, Hadley said the NIE report proves that the "international
community has to turn up the pressure on Iran -- with diplomatic isolation,
United Nations sanctions, and with other financial pressure -- and Iran
has to decide it wants to negotiate a solution."
In other
words, since the report emphasizes that the previous U.S. pressure convinced
Iran to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program, continuing the
pressures is necessary for international peace!
(3) Instead
of pointing the finger at the neoconservative system of the United States,
the report attempts to give the impression that the Islamic Republic
of Iran is belligerent by nature and to justify Bush's statements last
month, when, probably in line with this report, he said, "If you're
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be
interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to
make a nuclear weapon."
In fact,
the report was released to influence world public opinion and convince
people that if there is going to be a third world war, Iran will be
the instigator, not the U.S.!
Now, we expect
high-ranking Iranian officials to avoid making hasty evaluations of
such reports and adopting incautious stances toward them.
The fact
is that ElBaradei's report has not created any problems for U.S. objectives
and was designed completely in line with the U.S. National Intelligence
Estimate.
As mentioned
before, it seems that the IAEA director general's only responsibility
is to provide the additional information needed by U.S. intelligence
agencies.
Washington's
plot against the Iranian nation and their nuclear program has a technical
phase and a political phase.
ElBaradei's
duty is to prepare the technical requirements under the auspices of
an allegedly professional international organization, but the main job
is put on the shoulders of the U.S. spy agencies and media outlets.
Therefore,
we should be aware that ElBaradei's mission is not yet completed, and
in this situation, instead of praising him for making a few positive
statements, it would be better for us to be more reasonable and wait
until the end of autumn.
The question
still remains: Which part of ElBaradei's report and the NIE was positive.
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