The extraordinary spectacle of President George W. Bush’s national security adviser obliged to defend the president’s Iran policy against a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) raises two core issues: How are we now to judge the nuclear threat posed by Iran? How are we to judge the intelligence community’s relationship with the White House and the rest of the government?
The unclassified “Key Judgments” released by the intelligence community to the public begin with a dramatic assertion: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Inevitably, this sentence was widely interpreted as a challenge to the Bush administration policy of mobilizing international pressure against alleged Iranian nuclear programs. It was, in fact, qualified by a footnote whose complex phraseology obfuscated that the suspension really applied to only one aspect (and not even the most significant aspect) of the Iranian nuclear weapons program: the construction of warheads. That qualification was not restated in the rest of the document, which continued to refer to the halt of the weapons program repeatedly and without qualification.
Building warheads
The reality is that the concern about Iranian nuclear weapons has had three components: the production of fissile material; the development of missiles; and the building of warheads. Heretofore production of fissile material has been treated as by far the greatest danger, and the Iranian production of fissile material has been taking place at an accelerating pace since 2006. So has the development of missiles of increasing range. What appears to have been suspended is the engineering aimed at the production of warheads.
The new Estimate holds that Iran may be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 and, with increasing confidence, more warheads by the period 2010 to 2015.
That is virtually the same timeline as suggested in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate. The new Estimate does not assess how long it would take to build a warhead, though it treats the availability of fissile material as the principal limiting factor. If there is a significant gap between these two processes, it would be important to be told what it is. Nor are we told how close to developing a warhead Tehran was at the time it suspended its program or how confident the intelligence community is in its ability to learn when work on warheads has resumed. On the latter point, the new Estimate expresses only “moderate” confidence that the suspension has not been lifted already.
It is therefore doubtful that the evidence supports the dramatic language of the Summary and, even less, the sweeping conclusions drawn in much of the public commentary. For the past three years, the international debate has concentrated on the Iranian effort to enrich uranium by centrifuges, of which some 3,000 are now in operation. The administration has asserted that this represents a decisive step toward the acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons and has urged a policy of maximum pressure. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has supported the request that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. The various countries differ on the urgency with which their recommendations be pressed and in their willingness to impose penalties.
Unacceptable
The NIE then highlights, without altering, the underlying issue: At what point would the nations which have described an Iranian nuclear military program as ‘unacceptable’’ agree to act on that conviction? Do they wait until Iran actually starts producing nuclear warheads? Does our intelligence assume that we will know this threshold? Is there enough time then for meaningful countermeasures? What happens to the growing stock of fissile material which, according to the Estimate, will have been accumulated? Do we run the risk of finding ourselves with an adversary who, in the end, agrees to stop further production of fissile material but insists on retaining the existing stockpile as a potential threat?
By stating a conclusion in such categorical terms — considered excessive even by the International Atomic Energy Agency — the Key Judgments blur the line between estimates and conjecture. For example, the document explains the halt of the Iranian weapons program in 2003 as follows: “We judge with high confidence that the halt . . . was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” The Estimate extrapolates from that judgment that Iran “is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005” and that it “may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.”
It is to be hoped that the full Estimate provides more comprehensive evidence for these conclusions. A more plausible alternative explanation would assign much more significance to the regional context and American actions. When Iran halted its weapons program and suspended efforts at enriching uranium in February 2003, America had already occupied Afghanistan and was on the verge of invading Iraq, both on the borders of Iran. It justified its Iraq policy by the need to remove weapons of mass destruction from the region. By the fall of 2003, when Iran voluntarily joined the Additional Protocol for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Saddam had just been overthrown. Is it unreasonable to assume that the ayatollahs concluded that restraint had become imperative?
Enterprise extension
By the fall of 2005, the American effort in Iraq had shown signs of bogging down; the prospects for extending the enterprise into Iran were diminishing. The Iranian leaders could have therefore felt free to return to their previous policy of building up a military nuclear capability — perhaps reinforced by the desire to create a deterrent to American regional aspirations. They might also have concluded that, given the fact that the secret effort had leaked, it would be too dangerous to undertake another covert program.
Hence the emphasis on renewing its enrichment program in the guise of a civilian energy program. In short, if my analysis is correct, we could be witnessing not a halt of the Iranian weapons program — as the NIE asserts — but a subtle, ultimately more dangerous, version of it that will phase in the warhead when the fissile material production has matured.
The Estimate does not so much reject this theory; it does not even examine it. It concludes that “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon . . . .” But a cost-benefit analysis does not exclude a rush to weapons on a systematic basis. It depends on the criteria by which costs and benefits are determined. Similarly, in pursuing the cost-benefit rationale, the Estimate concludes that a combination of international scrutiny along with security guarantees might “prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.” That is a policy, not an intelligence, judgment.
A coherent national strategy toward Iran is not a partisan issue, for it will have to be implemented well after the present administration has left office. I have long argued that America owes it to itself to explore fully the possibility of normalizing relations with Iran. We do not need to tranquilize ourselves about the danger in order to pursue a more peaceful world. What is required is based on a specific vision linking assurances for Iran’s security and respect for its identity with an Iranian foreign policy compatible with the existing order in the Middle East. But it must also generate an analysis of the strategy to be pursued should Iran, in the end, choose ideology over reconciliation.
The intelligence community has a major role in helping to design such a vision. But it needs to recognize that the more it ventures into policy conjecture, the less authoritative its judgments become. There was some merit in the way President Nixon conducted National Security Council discussions at the beginning of his first term. He invited the CIA director to brief on the capabilities and intentions of the countries under discussion but required him to leave the room for the policy deliberations. Because so many decisions require an intelligence input, this procedure proved unworkable.
Intelligence community
I have often defended the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community. This is why I am extremely concerned about the tendency of the intelligence community to turn itself into a kind of separate branch of the government, as a check on, instead of a part of, the executive branch. When intelligence personnel expect their work to become subject of immediate public debate, they are tempted into the roles of surrogate policymakers and public policy advocates.
Thus the deputy director for intelligence estimates explained the public release of the Estimate as follows: “Since our understanding of Iran’s nuclear capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.” That may explain releasing the facts but not the sources and methods that have been flooding the media for a week. The paradoxical result of the trend toward public advocacy is to draw the intelligence community more deeply into the public maelstrom than ever.
The executive branch and the intelligence community have gone through a rough period. The White House has been accused of politicizing intelligence; the intelligence community has been charged with promoting institutional policy biases. The Key Judgments document accelerates that controversy, dismaying friends and confusing adversaries.
Intelligence personnel need to return to their traditional anonymity. Policymakers and Congress should once again assume responsibility for their judgments without involving the intelligence community in their public justifications. To define the proper balance between the user and producer of intelligence is a task that cannot be accomplished at the end of an administration. It is, however, one of the most urgent challenges a newly elected president will face.
© 2008 Henry Kissinger. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
