In the Trenches: 'Intelligence? Or lack thereof?'

When the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was released earlier this month, I was in Israel. Without exaggeration, it caused an earthquake there that registered a nine on the political Richter scale.

The questions were many: How could US intelligence have come up with such an implausible assessment, reversing years of confident assertions that Iran was hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons? Were President George W. Bush's hands being tied by those who feared a US confrontation with Iran, just weeks after he referred to the possibility of "World War III" if Teheran didn't heed the will of the international community? Why the emphasis on the reported end of weaponization, and not on the more critical findings of continued uranium enrichment and missile development? And why wasn't there a more prominent acknowledgment that it is impossible to know everything going on in a country as large and closed as Iran?

Israelis felt abandoned, their own intelligence findings rejected. Many concluded that they would be left to face the Iranian threat alone, having earlier allowed themselves to believe that the world, led by Washington, embraced its own assessment that Iran was a global, not just an Israeli, challenge.

Moreover, Israel felt trapped politically. While Iran posed an existential challenge to the Jewish state, leaders in Jerusalem sought to avoid an open rupture with Washington, its closest ally and dearest friend.

And then something happened.

Israel was no longer alone.

London and Paris found ways to express their own dismay at the way the NIE was formulated and the timing of its release. Reports suggest that both capitals are far closer to Jerusalem in their assessment of Iranian behavior. And they felt undercut by Washington, as they had both taken tough stances on the Iranian nuclear question.

Several of Iran's neighbors, particularly among the Gulf states, reacted to the US report with nothing short of astonishment, wondering if Washington could be relied on to stand up to the neighborhood bully.

An Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, credited with revealing Iran's secret nuclear program in 2002, asserted that the US had been duped. True, there had been a temporary halt in the weaponization program in 2003, the NCRI stated, but it had resumed a year later and its efforts had spread across the vast country, more easily to escape the probing eyes and ears of Western intelligence services.

Several respected national surveys, including Rasmussen, revealed that, by margins of two-to-one and three-to-one, the American people weren't buying the NIE conclusion, believing instead that Iran was clearly determined to build nuclear weapons and thus threatened American security.

And in Washington, some officials began distancing themselves from the NIE, arguing that nothing had really changed and additional sanctions measures against Iran were necessary.

It's too soon to tell which school will prevail, but a week can be a long time in politics.

Two things ought to be clear.

First, the key to a successful nuclear weapons program is the ability to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level. Iran continues to build centrifuges and the centrifuges continue to spin. Their goal? To enrich uranium. To what end? As Iran has no civilian nuclear reactors, and the Russians have insisted on providing the fuel for the reactor they're building at Bushehr, the conclusion ought to be obvious.

To mount a credible nuclear threat, a nation must have the means to deliver the weapons. Iran's missile development program is no secret, nor, incidentally, is the North Korean role in it. To the contrary, the Iranians flaunt their successes. The range of the Shahab-3, which reportedly can be fitted to carry a nuclear warhead, has been extended to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles), similar to that of the Ashoura, a ballistic missile tested in late November. And Iran is widely believed to be developing the Shahab-4, with an expected range of 3,000 kilometers. Why such determined efforts?

And what are we to make of Iran's apocalyptic rhetoric, including its threats to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and to confront the "Great Satan", the United States? Meaningless words? Iranian actions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, Gaza, and elsewhere would suggest otherwise.

No, it's not yet time for joy in Mudville, much as we might all wish otherwise. The NIE doesn't offer the comfort that some media headline-writers initially sought to convey.

Let's also remember that intelligence gathering and assessment is a notoriously imperfect craft. While it can at times produce spectacular successes, that's not always the case.

Consider:

• Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, who headed Army efforts in the Manhattan Project, predicted in 1948 that the Soviet Union would not "produce successful atomic bombs in quantity" until 1955 because of inadequate industrial and scientific capacity. The next year, Moscow tested an atomic bomb and began producing them in quantity. 
• According to President Harry Truman, "our monopoly came to an end sooner than the experts had predicted. An atomic explosion took place in Russia in August 1949. The intelligence experts had different opinions about it, but in general none of them had looked for the Russians to detonate any atomic device before 1952."
• Again, according to Truman, "General [Douglas] MacArthur himself had been the one who had said there was no danger of Chinese intervention [in Korea]. ... More important still, he had told me that he could easily cope with the Chinese Communists if they actually came in." Of course, Chinese forces did intervene, and coping with them proved anything but easy for US and Allied forces.
• To fast-forward, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter, presumably assured by US intelligence estimates, declared that "Because of the greatness of the shah, Iran is an island of stability in the Middle East." Less than 13 months later, the shah was forced to leave, the country was soon taken over by radical clerics, and 63 American hostages were held in Teheran for 444 days.
• In 1998, India conducted an underground nuclear test. Surely, in an open, democratic society like India, the US was able to pick up the activity well in advance, right? Wrong. As CNN reported, "Senator Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the US intelligence community was completely caught off guard. "Something went wrong," he told CNN in a live interview. "It was a colossal failure of US intelligence."
• Shortly afterward came the equally unanticipated Pakistani nuclear test, followed by the equally surprising revelations that, thanks to A.Q. Khan and his enablers, Pakistan had become the Wal-Mart of global nuclear proliferation.
• And how about our intelligence on North Korea's nuclear program and missile development, which according to officials cited in the Washington Times (October 12, 2006), "cast doubt about whether North Korea's nuclear program posed an immediate threat, whether North Korea could produce a militarily useful nuclear bomb, whether North Korea was capable of conducting an underground nuclear test and whether Pyongyang was bluffing by claiming that it could carry one out?" Wrong on all four counts.
• While it's still not clear what exactly was going on in Syria that prompted the Israeli air strike on September 6, reports indicate there was a clandestine nuclear effort, aided by North Korea. Information on the covert program was apparently shared by Jerusalem with Washington, not the other way around.

This list, of course, is far from complete. Much more could be said about disastrous intelligence estimates and their policy consequences. Take the 2002 NIE on Iraq, for example. But my aim isn't to malign the intelligence community. I appreciate the difficulties under which they valiantly labor and the responsibilities they shoulder. Rather, it's to suggest that their word isn't necessarily gospel.

In the case of Iran, common sense tells us that the Iranians are up to no good. Put another way, if it walks and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Iran's record and rhetoric leave little doubt about its aims. We have no choice but to face up to those stark facts.