Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

December 04, 2007

Spinning up Iranian Nukes

Much is currently being made about the National Intelligence Estimate released this week about the risk of a nuclear Iran. The most important story, however, has to be dug out of several sources.
Despite all the rhetoric from Dubya about Iran building nukes, the Bush Administration has been sitting on this report for nearly a year, apparently attempting to spin up a more negative result.
IPSNews.net Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.


But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

Hadley calls the report good news. WSJ works really hard at muddying the definitive nature of the result.
Well if Bush knew for a year that if anything the risk of Iranian nuclear weapons program was on hold, why all the rhetoric?
Juan Cole thinks Cheney has been working on regime change.
Then there is the very interesting article about the history of British meddling in Eurasia seeking to prolong it's empire by divide and conquer tactics to break up the possibility ominous new alliances in Asia.
Given Dubya's clumsy moves in Central Asia and signs of alliances brewing between Iran, Russia and China, Bush has been doing a lousy job of continuing British tactics. He may have in fact created the worst case scenario by forcing the Asian triumvirate to circle their wagons.

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