[BRIEF NOTE] Iran and the bomb, not
Dec. 4th, 2007 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldVia the New York Times:
While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apparently still believes that there is the possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons, it looks like the chances of Iran's nuclear-weaponization and/or military attacks against Iran have fallen sharply. The intelligence failure is particularly telling given how, since the 1970s, successive Iranian governments have favoured the development of nuclear power as a way to avoid depleting Iranian oil reserves and provide sufficient energy from a growing economy.
Why did Iran abandon its nuclear efforts then? Fred Kaplan suggests at Slate that diplomacy, in the form of smart sanctions and Iran's desire to become a recognized player, played non-trivial roles, while the comment of Matt in the comments at Daniel Drezner's blog also seems to make sense.
A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.
The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is likely to keep its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies “do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”
Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is intended for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that the enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.
But the new report essentially disavows a judgment that the intelligence agencies issued in 2005, which concluded that Iran had an active secret arms program intended to transform the raw material into a nuclear weapon. The new estimate declares instead with “high confidence” that the military-run program was shut in 2003, and it concludes with “moderate confidence” that the program remains frozen. The report judges that the halt was imposed by Iran “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”
It was not clear what prompted the reversal. Administration officials said the new estimate reflected conclusions that the intelligence agencies had agreed on only in the past several weeks. The report’s agnosticism about Iran’s nuclear intentions represents a very different tone than had been struck by President Bush, and by Vice President Dick Cheney, who warned in a speech in October that if Iran “stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.”
While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apparently still believes that there is the possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons, it looks like the chances of Iran's nuclear-weaponization and/or military attacks against Iran have fallen sharply. The intelligence failure is particularly telling given how, since the 1970s, successive Iranian governments have favoured the development of nuclear power as a way to avoid depleting Iranian oil reserves and provide sufficient energy from a growing economy.
Why did Iran abandon its nuclear efforts then? Fred Kaplan suggests at Slate that diplomacy, in the form of smart sanctions and Iran's desire to become a recognized player, played non-trivial roles, while the comment of Matt in the comments at Daniel Drezner's blog also seems to make sense.
In terms of large-scale factors visible to the public, I would guess that the motivations for Iran's decision back in 2003 were four-fold: 1) their own fear of Iraqi WMDs had just gone *poof*; 2) Libya's example encouraged them to think a deal with the US might be possible; 3) they thought influencing events in Iraq could provide a non-nuclear way of gaining greater international status; and 4) in the wake of Iraq, they were a bit twitchy about giving the US a genuine causus belli to attack.
I suspect that #1 was actually a major factor for them, just as the reciprocal fear was apparently a major factor for Hussein not wanting to come clean. Reasons 2 and 3 obviously go hand in hand - cut a deal on nukes and thereby get US blessing for more influence in Iraq. Reason number 4 is likely to be the one everyone focuses on, though, with people trumpeting it on the Right and denying it on the Left.
As far as that goes, I think Iran did have a credible reason to worry about the US in 2003 - the insurgency hadn't fully kicked off yet, so it might well have looked like we had the wherewithal to hopscotch over to them. By 2004 and 2005, however, it was clear we weren't able to do that, so their decision not to resume their nuke program at that point probably little to do with fear of American reprisals and much more to do with the "cut a deal, get influence" logic having taken root.
