Clinton, Still Ignoring 2007 NIE On Iran, Upsets Israel Too

By Steve Hynd

SecState Clinton has revived her campaign notion of extending America's nuclear umbrella to Gulf States in the face of an "Iranian nuclear threat", and says it never really went away. Israel's rightwing government is pissed, it says because "we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this". In reality, it's pissed because it knows that any umbrella would have to promise to cover the Gulf States from Israeli as well as Iranian nuclear agression to be credible with those states. For Israel, it has always been about ensuring it remains the only nuclear kid on the block.

But even if Israel is unhappy about the notion of Clinton's plan effectively taking away their regional monopoly on nuclear threats, it's clear from Clinton's words that she's still more disposed towards the Israeli version of Iran's nuclear intent than that presented by the UN atom watchdog, the IAEA - or even by her own intelligence agencies, who see no reason to rescind their 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran has no current intention of producing nukes.

Mrs Clinton reiterated President Barack Obama's policy that talks were still an option between Iran and the US, but that "crippling action" could also be considered.

Speaking in an interview for Thai television, she said: "If the US extends a defence umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon."

I've been through this before: Clinton is by far the worst offender, followed by Obama and Panetta, in ignoring the 2007 NIE. Yet the man who organised that NIE, former deputy director of national intelligence Tom Fingar, stands by it's findings and Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, has said that "the intelligence community agrees ... that Iran has not decided to press forward... to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile."

The 2007 NIE has been a massive thorn in the side of the "real men go to Tehran" faction ever since it was declassified and they've tried to debunk or cast a shadow over it several times. The most recent attempt is an account of the German intelligence agency's alleged belief that Iran has been concealing weapons work all this time. The report, originally in Der Spiegel, was then the subject of an op-ed in the WSJ by the German journalist concerned, Bruno Schirra and subsequently created quite a stir among far-right pundits who have always believed that today, or any day, is a good day to bomb Iran.

Schirra, author of "Iran - Explosive for Europe", has a long list of articles to his credit alleging that Iran shelters Al Qaeda's leadership, sent Bin Laden's son to Syria to start terror cells, gave guns to Chechen terrorists and that the relationship between German intelligence and Iran was "too close". In May 2008 he was a speaker at a neocon-organised symposium entitled "The Iranian Regime, the Holy War against Israel and the West and the German reaction" during which he told the assembled neoconservative audience that Iran only understood the "language of sticks."

However, Schirra's article really doesn't stand up. Intelligence insiders point to the fact that the BND, Germany's intel agency, was relying mainly on Israeli intelligence for it's assessments prior to the US 2007 NIE and say that US intelligence regarded the BND's information as "too derivative". They also point to the fact that the US had a uniquely positioned primary source of evidence on precisely the question of whether Iran had put its nuke plans on the shelf in the form of defected General Ali Rez Asgari  - evidence to which no other intel agency had access.

Even then, the BND's belief isn't what Schirra says it is - namely that they think Iran has secretly continued nuclear weaponization work. His Der Spiegel piece, rather than his WSJ op-ed where his own prejudices cloud the issue, makes that clear enough. It admits that most of the BND's intelligence comes from Mossad and continues to quote the BND position as "less than 5 years" for Iran to be able to test and longer for a deployable weapon...again, and as always, starting from the day Iran kicks out the IAEA inspectors and begins HEU production.

Until that eventful day, what we have is Iran developing the capacity for a weapon, not an actual weapon. A dozen nations have that capacity already but haven't gone on to develop nukes. That's perfectly in accord with Mohammed elBaradei's stated opinion - that what Iran is seeking is a "virtual deterrent" rather than an actual one. Five years from the day they kick the inspectors out, if they ever do, is not worth the WSJ piece's hyperventilation. Nor does it prove Iran is actively working for a weapon rather than a weapons-building capability.

The 2007 NIE is still intact. Which makes it strange that America's president and senior diplomat insist on ignoring it. The plausible answer is that the administration is trying for strategic ambiguity - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. In Clinton's case, however, it looks as if the saber rattling may be more a case of personal animosity than administration diplomatic gamesmanship.