Still on another planet

On Planet Bush, all is fine and dandy when it comes to Iraq. But with Iran, all is doom and gloom.

As KOW has noted, the recently declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme does paint a very different picture. Learning lessons from past…ahem…errors, the NIE is careful in specifying the degree of confidence it has in each of its findings.

So what are it’s main conclusions? Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons up to Fall 2003 and then halted the programme. The NIE judges with high confidence that the programme has not restarted as of mid 2007. Iran is trying to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) which would provide the necessary fissile material for a nuclear weapon. But the NIE is highly confident that it will not produce sufficient HEU until the 2010-2015 period, and is unlikely to do so before 2013. The NIE also assesses with high confidence that Iran will not be capable of reprocessing sufficient plutonium for a nuclear weapon before 2015.

As recently as October, the Bush administration was talking up the threat from Iran’s nuclear programme and hinting, none too subtly, that military strikes may be necessary to stop Iran from acquiring a nuke before 2010. The President has formally welcomed the NIE , noting that it represents a “sea-change” from earlier analysis on Iran, thanks to recent U.S. intelligence reforms. So has this new assessment led Bush to change his views concerning the imminence of the Iranian threat. Not exactly:

I still feel strongly that Iran is a danger. Nothing has changed in this NIE that says, okay, why don’t we just stop worrying about it. Quite the contrary. I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. My opinion hasn’t changed.

This, after all, is the President who famously does not waiver in his views. As Steve Colbert wryly joked (to the President’s face!)

The greatest thing about this man is that he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change. This man’s beliefs never will.

To be clear: the Iranian threat has not disappeared. There is, indeed, nothing in the NIE to suggest that Iran has abandoned its plans to acquire nuclear weapons. But the NIE does assess, as conclusively as one can in such documents, that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons programme and that this was down to successful international pressure.

To suggest, as the President has been trying, that nothing has changed is somewhat disingenuous (American readers please note, this is English for “pure BS”). Bush is either playing Americans for fools, and god knows he’s tried this before. Or, as Joe Bidden put it, perhaps less kindly: “he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”