CIA: No Iranian nuclear weapons drive

A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top investigative reporter said on Nov. 19. Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the Nov. 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the Bush administration was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress. A month before the mid-term legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice-President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy. "If the Democrats won on Nov. 7, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion. Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions "and thus stop Congress from getting in its way," he said. But the administration's planning of a military option was made "far more complicated" in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency "challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb," he wrote. "The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Hersh wrote. The CIA's analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told Hersh, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity detection devices that clandestine US and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found. The CIA assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis and said the White House had been hostile to it. Cheney and his aides had discounted the assessment, the official said. "They're not looking for a smoking gun," the official was quoted as saying, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. "They're looking for the degree of comfort evel they think they need to accomplish the mission." The Bush administration has claimed Iran's uranium enrichment program is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons. Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. On Nov. 15, Israel's outgoing US ambassador Danny Ayalon said in an interview that Bush would not hesitate to use force against Iran to halt its nuclear program if other options failed. "Bush will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program," Ayalon said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has told European politicians and diplomats recently that the United States lacks sufficient intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities at this time, which prevents it from initiating a military strike against them. Meanwhile, Bush told French President Jacques Chirac several weeks ago that the possibility that Israel would carry out a strike against Iran's nuclear installations should not be ruled out. Bush also said that if such an attack were to take place, he would understand it. "It's a classic case of 'failure forward,'" a Pentagon consultant told Hersh. "They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq–like doubling your bet." The consultant added that, for some advocates of military action, "the goal in Iran is not regime change, but a strike that will send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals." In the current issue of the influential journal Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argues that the Bush administration has little choice. "Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office," he wrote. The president would be bitterly criticized for a preemptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives "need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes." The main Middle East expert on the vice president's staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Unlike those in the White House who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney's office "want to end the regime," the Pentagon consultant is quoted as saying. "They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq War without regime change in Iran." US could bomb Iran in 2007 Political analysts in Washington agree that Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year. "I think he is going to do it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think tank, said. "They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington claims are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Joseph Cirincione also believes the US government could decide to attack Iran. In May 2004, the National Journal listed Cirincione as one of the 100 people who will play a critical role in the policy debates of the Bush administration. The World Affairs Councils of America also named him one of 500 people whose views have the most influence in shaping US foreign policy. Cirincione worked for nine years in the US House of Representatives on the professional staff of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Government Operations. "It is not realistic but it does not mean we won't do it," he said. "If you look at what the administration is doing, it seems that it is going to inevitably lead us to a military conflict," Cirincione said, adding that no alternative solution was being sought. "Senior members of the [Bush] administration remain seized with the idea that the regime in Iran must be removed," Cirincione said, accusing neoconservative circles of promoting the military option against Tehran. In a recent op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Muarvchik, resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, called for getting tough with Iran. "We must bomb Iran," he said. "The path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.… Our options therefore are narrowed to two: we can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it."