The Clipboard: American intelligence on Iran derided as scandalous

From an article¹:

American intelligence on Iran's alleged weapons programmes is woefully thin, an independent panel set up by President Bush is expected to tell him within weeks.

The findings of the bipartisan commission are at odds with the apparent certainty with which Washington is accusing Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bush reiterated yesterday that the US, with European governments, believes "that the Iranians want a nuclear weapon".

But the verdict of the nine-man panel threatens to cloud such clarity. It suggests that the CIA has poured millions of dollars into gathering intelligence in Iran over more than two decades, but with little effect. One knowledgeable source described US intelligence on Iran as scandalous, according to The New York Times. (link)

Why am I not surprised?

An earlier report in the Times of London (called Blair's loyalty tested as Bush menaces Iran. I like that. Bush "menaces" Iran. ) noted:

There is also concern in London that the Pentagon may be ordered to act on the basis of flawed intelligence. Despite the debacle over Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon appears to be relying heavily on satellite photographs of Iranian installations that British sources describe as alarmingly inconclusive.

"They tell us, ‘Look, bulldozers have been down this road three times. Something's going on'," said one well informed source. "They are very dismissive when European humint (human intelligence) suggests something different." ...

...Yet British and other officials warn that intelligence on Iranian nuclear development is far from complete. While the ayatollahs have boasted about some of their nuclear assets, American experts are divided over whether a parallel, clandestine programme is being developed in hardened bunkers out of sight of US satellites.

"We just don't know where all the stuff is," said one British official. "We don't know how far they have dispersed or duplicated facilities and we don't know how much of what we can see is dummy or decoy construction. In short, we can't be sure we've got all the targets to stop them from building a weapon." ...

...Behind the ayatollahs' posturing lies what British officials believe is a persuasive argument against a military attack: far from encouraging Iranian reformers to rise up against their theocratic government, any form of US intervention might unite the country behind Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader.

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Complete text of the article, American intelligence on Iran derided as scandalous, by Roland Watson

American intelligence on Iran's alleged weapons programmes is woefully thin, an independent panel set up by President Bush is expected to tell him within weeks.

The findings of the bipartisan commission are at odds with the apparent certainty with which Washington is accusing Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bush reiterated yesterday that the US, with European governments, believes "that the Iranians want a nuclear weapon".

But the verdict of the nine-man panel threatens to cloud such clarity. It suggests that the CIA has poured millions of dollars into gathering intelligence in Iran over more than two decades, but with little effect. One knowledgeable source described US intelligence on Iran as scandalous, according to The New York Times.

In the first leak from the panel's otherwise watertight considerations, the newspaper said that US intelligence suffered a significant setback in the late 1980s when its spy network in Iran was penetrated by Iranian agents. It has since had little success in garnering highly valued human intelligence.

The verdict of the panel carries clout because it was set up by Mr Bush precisely to learn the lessons of the debacle over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Bush has said that he has great confidence that the panel will produce "a very solid report". Its members, led by Laurence Silberman, a retired judge, and Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator and governor, have received unrestricted access to the most senior intelligence officials and the most sensitive papers.

The panel is also critical of US intelligence on North Korea, but concedes that the Stalinist regime there is a harder nut to crack than Tehran.

The commission's considerations come at a time when US intelligence chiefs are reassessing their conclusions on Iran's weapons programmes with a view to producing a new assessment in the spring.

Iran signed a deal with Russia this month to receive nuclear fuel for its power plant at Bushehr. Tehran says that its nuclear programme is limited to power production, but the US says that that is a front for a military programme.

Some analysts have suggested that if Iran's purposes are purely deterrence, it is well served by the appearance of a nuclear programme even if, like Saddam, it does not have one.

The panel, the President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, was set up to look at three areas: the collective failure over Iraq's WMD; an assessment of the nuclear network of A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons; and US intelligence on North Korea and Iran.

reference=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1518524,00.html