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December 5, 2007: A new U.S. intelligence analysis claims that Iran halted its nuclear weapons research program in 2003. This is odd, since the report was created by an agency that answers to the president of the United States. But the people creating the Iran weapons section have a reputation for pro-Iran opinions. Moreover, the "halt" angle has very little to back it up. This new analysis seems to be more for political than intelligence effect, as it throws cold water on U.S. politicians who are calling for an attack on Iran (which would mainly help the unpopular religious dictatorship there, as it would rally the people behind them).

 

December 2, 2007: The United Arab Emirates has demanded the return of three islands in the Persian Gulf, which Iran seized by force in 1971, and refuses to give back.

 

November 29, 2007: The government condemned a peace conference, with Israel and most Arab nations in attendance, in the United States. While the official purpose of the conference was to get peace talks going between Israel and the Palestinians, the unspoken reason was fear of Iran. The Arab world is very concerned with Iran's growing military strength, and aggressiveness in the Persian Gulf (Arab attempts to get the world to think of it as the "Arabian Gulf" have largely failed.)

 

November 28, 2007: The government announced several new weapons, including a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers. That means it could reach Israel, which is a big deal for Iran (whose official goal is the destruction of Israel). Iran does not have any nuclear warheads for these missiles, and chemical warheads are particularly tricky to develop for ballistic missiles (since chemical and biological weapons are easily neutralized by the kind of high temperatures generated by a ballistic missile warhead diving towards its target). Like many of its locally developed weapons, these are believed more for propaganda, than actual combat utility.

 

November 27, 2007: Some Iranian government organizations are still moving weapons and people into Iraq, to help pro-Iranian Shia groups attack their enemies (including government and U.S. troops). The Iranian government won't admit that it doesn't control all if its "dirty tricks" operators, but here is another example of it.

 

November 26, 2007: Operations against Kurdish separatists (the PKK) in the northwest have intensified as the Turkish army continuing to mass on the Iraqi border, and the Iraqi Kurds agreeing to crack down on the PKK. As a result, more PKK are moving into Iran. There, the police recently arrested eleven PKK members, and found documents indicating increased attacks inside Iran.

 

November 24, 2007: The thousands of Iranians crossing the Iraqi border each day to visit Shia religious shrines, are becoming a political problem. These pilgrims return with stories of how prosperous the Iraqis are in a democracy. In Iran, the Sunni Arab terrorism is played up, but the pilgrims rarely see any evidence of that. They do see freedom and prosperity, especially in contrast to what they have back home. Iran cannot stop these visits, which were allowed even under Saddam Hussein (who encouraged them during the 1990s, as a source of revenue for his embargoed rule).

 

November 23, 2007: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come under increasing criticism from the religious leadership, which actually outranks him and controls more actual government power.  Ahmadinejad's stature has taken a beating in opinion polls, as many Iranians wonder when they are going to see some benefit from all that oil revenue.

 

 

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ker       12/5/2007 5:50:01 PM
"This is odd, since the report was created by an agency that answers to the president of the United States. But the people creating the Iran weapons section have a reputation for pro-Iran opinions. Moreover, the "halt" angle has very little to back it up. This new analysis seems to be more for political than intelligence effect,"
 
WHAT THE EXPLICITAVE? 
 
I heard about the Manturian class in the Department of State, the people who accused the Presedent of staging a co when he tried to take control. Now the agency?  The next thing your going to tell me is that some CIA employe "outted" her self to get a book deal.
 
 
 
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SAE    But Ker It Appears That Strategypage Was Right   12/10/2007 2:36:28 PM
American Thinker
 
December 05, 2007

The suspect provenance of the NIE report

Ed Lasky
The Wall Street Journal editorial that ran this morning  echoes and expands upon suspicions first articulated by the New York Sun that the National Intelligence Estimate was cooked up by bureaucrats eager to embarrass George Bush and transform US policy towards Iran.

A dynamic is at work that will serve Iranian interests by throwing a wrench in plans to expand sanctions against it for its nuclear program; it also will serve to veto any plans to attack its nuclear facilities.

The three main authors of this report are former State Department officials with previous reputations that should lead one to doubt their conclusions. All three are ex-bureaucrats who, as is generally true of State Department types, favor endless rounds of negotiation and "diplomacy" and oppose confrontation. These three officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, have "reputations as hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials".
They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Tom Fingar was a State Department employee who was an expert on China and Germany -- he has no notable experience, according to his bio in the Middle East and its geopolitics.
Vann Van Diepen is also a career State Department bureaucrat who, according to the New York Sun, is one of the State Department bureaucrats who want "revenge" for having their views regarding Iran ignored by the Bush Administration. He is now seeking to further his own agenda. As the Sun wrote in their editorial yesterday:
Vann Van Diepen, one of the estimate's main authors, has spent the last five years trying to get http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+States href="http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+States">America to accept Iran's right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war.
http://www.nysun.com/article/67479 href="http://www.nysun.com/article/67479">
Vann Diepen also shares a lack of experience in dealing with Iran or the region.

The third main author comes in for particular criticism in the Wall Street Journal editorial. Kenneth Brill served as the US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). This is an agency that has served to enable Iranian's quest for nuclear weapons. The head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, has even been called a friend by the Iranian regime. As he should be, for he has been an enabler of its nuclear weapons program and has stiff-armed European Union diplomats who have worked to restrain Iran.

Elbaredei and the IAEA have over-reached and now seek to control diplomatic negotiations with Iran -- a function that is beyond its mandate. Brill was apparently unwilling to stop this mission creep and put an end to Elbaradei's efforts to help Iran. Or, as the Wall Street Journal hints, maybe he was just incompetent. This hint comes from former US Ambassador to the UN  John Bolton's (who headed counter-proliferation efforts in the State Department previous to his UN posting) new book:
For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation offi
 
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SAE    It was Armitage who Outed Plame   12/10/2007 3:46:25 PM
 

The Man Who Said Too Much

A book coauthored by NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff details Richard Armitage's central role in the Valerie Plame leak.

By Michael Isikoff | NEWSWEEK

Sep 4, 2006 Issue

In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper and had come across a column by journalist Robert Novak. Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. "I'm sure he's talking about me."

 

Armitage's admission led to a flurry of anxious phone calls and meetings that day at the State Department. (Days earlier, the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the Plame leak after the CIA informed officials there that she was an undercover officer.) Within hours, William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, notified a senior Justice official that Armitage had information relevant to the case. The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo made no reference to her undercover status.) Armitage had met with Novak in his State Department office on July 8, 2003--just days before Novak published his first piece identifying Plame. Powell, Armitage and Taft, the only three officials at the State Department who knew the story, never breathed a word of it publicly and Armitage's role remained secret.

 
 
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