A Plan Gone Awry

The argument over the 2007 NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) on Iran is well underway.
Central to the debate is why the intelligence estimate changed so radically from 2005 to 2007 (the earlier estimate concluding in the 2005 version that "Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons," while the 2007 estimate concluded that "we judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.").
One reason: "senior U.S. intelligence officials said the judgment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 emerged four to six months ago as a result of fresh intelligence, some of it from open sources and some from a "very rigorous scrub" of 20 years of information, some of which informed the 2005 NIE."
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This explanation isn't at all satisfactory to those who view Iran's intentions--and now the intelligence community's--suspiciously. There have been accusations of "blatant unprofessionalism" of analysts who've removed "their analytical caps and gowns and put on their policy wigs." Others, like Opinion Journal have said, "Our own 'confidence' is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as 'hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.'" Yet a third complaint, targeted more at media than intelligence analysts (citing "at least three (maybe four) theories or reasons as to why the NIE has changed its position on Iran"), says that "if the media is going to be on attack for the administration getting so much wrong on Iran’s program, might they themselves find a uniform theory of their story line as to why the administration was so wrong?"
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Yet the President said following the 2005 estimate, "people will say, if we’re trying to make the case on Iran, well, the intelligence failed in Iraq, therefore, how can we trust the intelligence in Iran?" That case, he continued, "requires people to believe that the Iranian nuclear program is, to a certain extent, ongoing."
If even that earlier estimate required a leap of faith what other reaction but disbelief can be expected now? When Bush suggested today that Iran "come clean with the international community about the scope of their nuclear activities," and that Iran "has more to explain about its nuclear intentions and past actions, especially the covert nuclear weapons program pursued until the fall of 2003," he cited no definitive evidence that Iran is pursuing a bomb.
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And that's really the issue. There is nothing definitive either way. Perhaps the Iranians are withholding full cooperation from the IAEA to demonstrate their growing regional influence. Perhaps they do, indeed, have something worth concealing (the estimate assesses "with moderate confidence 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.")
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No one knows.
What we're left with, as with Iraq, is belief--a belief, in this instance, that Iran must be pursuing a weapon, since it's an Islamic Shia theocracy and must therefore be irrational (regardless of the NIE analysis that sees it as behaving rationally).
And while much of the NIE is classified, the lack of concrete knowledge about Iranian intention and behavior regarding nuclear weaponry means, among other things, a lack of data necessary to attack their nuclear facilities. If we don't know what they have, much less where it is, how precise can any bombing campaign possibly be?
But angry fires have been stoked and supporters of the president are seething with the release of this estimate. They want to maintain the blustering, threatening policy of belligerence that preceded the report's release.
But it won't do. It simply won't do.