NIE Says Iran Halted Its Nuclear Program In 2003

CNN just reported this, and here's an AP article which has a headline that belies the major revelation.

US Officials: Iran has nuke capability

WASHINGTON—Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but is continuing to enrich uranium, which means it may still be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, senior intelligence officials said Monday.

Barbara Starr at the Pentagon reported that the centrifuges appear to be malfunctioning, and Iran is not likely to be able to produce the material necessary to create a nuclear weapon.

This is a major blow to propaganda efforts to start yet another war in the Middle East. And this is part of the unclassified summary of the report, which the Cheney Administration has been trying to bottle up for some time.

"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," states the unclassified summary of the secret report, released Monday.

Officials said the new findings suggest that diplomacy was effective in containing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"This is good news in that the U.S. policy coupled with the policies and actions of those who have been our partners appear to have had some success. Iran seems to have been pressured," one of the officials said. "Given that good news we don't want to relax. We want to keep those pressures up."

Stunning news. I'll have more in a bit.

UPDATE: Mark Mazzetti of the NYT has more.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be explosive in the middle of tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program, and in the middle of a presidential campaign during which a possible military strike against Iran's nuclear program has been discussed.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran's ultimate intentions about gaining a nuclear weapon remain unclear, but that Iran's "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."

The wingnut response is going to be BALLISTIC. They're going to say, as they did with Iraq, "if they weren't seeking nukes, why were they hiding their intentions?" This has an obvious answer: ambiguity would be useful in negotiations and could stop attacks. We saw that North Korea's nukes yielded negotiations; Iraq's lack of nukes yielded attack.

UPDATE II: The White House is spinning that Iran is still "keeping the door open" to develop nuclear weapons, and that the risk of acquiring nukes remains. They're going to focus on the "by 2010" number. Stephen Hadley is going to make a statement at 3pm ET.

UPDATE III: I wonder what newly-minted WMD advisor Paul Wolfowitz has to say about this.


UPDATE IV: The declassified portion of the NIE report is here (.pdf). Here's something:

Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January 2006, despite the continued halt in the nuclear weapons program. Iran made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges at Natanz, but we judge with moderate confidence it still faces significant technical problems operating them [...]

We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of
producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.
(INR judges Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013 because of
foreseeable technical and programmatic problems.) All agencies recognize the
possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015.

In other words, the centrifuges are malfunctioning, if they fix them all and nothing else goes wrong they could have enough uranium in two years, but it's unlikely that they would actually have enough for six years. This is important to know when wingers go on the teevee and claim "Iran's going to have a weapon in two years!"