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CNN.com said:U.S. report: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003
* Story Highlights
* Declassified summary of intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear work released
* Estimate says Tehran is "less determined to develop nuclear weapons"
* Report: Iran unlikely to have enough material for nuclear bomb until 2010
* But White House official says Iran remains a threat
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iran halted work toward a nuclear weapon under international scrutiny in 2003 and is unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb until 2010 to 2015, a U.S. intelligence report says.
A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate found with "high confidence" that the Islamic republic stopped an effort to develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003.
The estimate is less severe than a 2005 report that judged the Iranian leadership was "determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure."
But the latest report says Iran -- which declared its ability to produced enriched uranium for a civilian energy program in 2006 -- could reverse that decision and eventually produce a nuclear weapon if it wanted to do so.
Enriched uranium at low concentrations can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, but much higher concentrations are needed to yield a nuclear explosion.
"We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely," the report says. A more likely time frame for that production is between 2010 and 2015, it concludes.
Iran has insisted its nuclear program is strictly aimed at producing electricity, and the country has refused the U.N. Security Council's demand to halt its enrichment program.
Monday's report represents the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies. It suggests that a combination of "threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways," could persuade the Iranian leadership to continue its suspension of nuclear weapons research.
Available intelligence suggests the Iranian leadership is guided "by a cost-benefit approach," not a headlong rush to develop a bomb, the report concludes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has reported that Iran is cooperating with inspectors by providing access to declared nuclear material, documents and facilities. However, the agency also said Iran is withholding information in other areas, and as a result, the IAEA's knowledge about the status of the program is "diminishing."
Iran says its uranium enrichment work is allowed under the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Security Council has passed two rounds of sanctions against Tehran, but Washington missed its goal of reaching consensus on tighter restrictions by the end of November, the State Department said last week.
U.S. National Security adviser Stephen Hadley expressed hope after Monday's announcement, but he said Iran remains a serious threat.
"The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically -- without the use of force -- as the administration has been trying to do," Hadley said in a statement.
"But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem."
The report comes amid widespread accusations that the Bush administration is attempting to maneuver the United States into a conflict with Iran, which it accuses of meddling in the war in Iraq. In October, the United States designated elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as supporters of terrorism.
NIEs examine current capabilities and vulnerabilities and, perhaps more importantly, consider future developments. Policymakers usually request the estimates, but the intelligence community also can initiate them.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/03/iran.nuclear/index.html
once again, the bush administration has tried to lie to the american public to gain support for another misguided attempt at stirring up trouble in the middle east. the article below also mentions that the national intelligence estimate (NIE) the above article references was supposed to be released last year, but the white house wanted all dissenting views removed from it and they knew damn well that they were giving us false information with their claims of a possible world war 3 caused by iran's nuke program.
CommonDreams.org said:Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - 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 Cheneys 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.1109 02
A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told IPS that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions particularly on Irans nuclear programme.
The NIE coordinates the judgments of 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.
There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear programme poses, according to the intelligence officials account. Some analysts who are less independent are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheneys office, but others have rejected that view.
The draft NIE first completed a year ago, which had included the dissenting views, was not acceptable to the White House, according to the former intelligence officer. They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it, he says.
As recently as early October, the official involved in the process was said to be unclear about whether an NIE would be circulated and, if so, what it would say.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.
The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy, says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.
In October 2006, Giraldi wrote in The American Conservative that the NIE on Iran had already been completed, but that Cheneys office had objected to its findings on both the Iranian nuclear programme and Irans role in Iraq. The draft NIE did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming the Shiite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.
Giraldi said the White House had decided to postpone any decision on the internal release of the NIE until after the November 2006 elections.
Cheneys desire for a clean NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007.
Negroponte had angered the neoconservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be a number of years off before Iran would be likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade.
Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005. Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Irans nuclear programme was nearing the point of no return an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.
Frank J. Gaffney, a protégé of neoconservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons.
On Jan. 5, 2007, Pres. George W. Bush announced the nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael Mike McConnell to be director of national intelligence. McConnell was approached by Cheney himself about accepting the position, according to Newsweek.
McConnell was far more amenable to White House influence than his predecessor. On Feb. 27, one week after his confirmation, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was comfortable saying its probable that the alleged export of explosively formed penetrators to Shiite insurgents in Iraq was linked to the highest leadership in Iran.
Cheney had been making that charge, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates, as well as Negroponte, had opposed it.
A public event last spring indicated that White House had ordered a reconsideration of the draft NIEs conclusion on how many years it would take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. The previous Iran estimate completed in spring 2005 had estimated it as 2010 to 2015.
Two weeks after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in mid-April that Iran would begin producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, said in an interview with National Public Radio that the completion of the NIE on Iran had been delayed while the intelligence community determined whether its judgment on the time frame within which Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be amended.
Fingar said the estimate might change, citing new reporting from the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as some other new information we have. And then he added, We are serious about reexamining old evidence.
That extraordinary revelation about the NIE process, which was obviously ordered by McConnell, was an unsubtle signal to the intelligence community that the White House was determined to obtain a more alarmist conclusion on the Iranian nuclear programme.
A decision announced in late October indicated, however, that Cheney did not get the consensus findings on the nuclear programme and Irans role in Iraq that he had wanted. On Oct. 27, David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell, told a congressional briefing that McConnell had issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates.
That reversed a Bush administration practice of releasing summaries of key judgments in NIEs that began when the White House made public the key judgments from the controversial 2002 NIE on Iraqs alleged weapons of mass destruction programme in July 2003.
The decision to withhold key judgments on Iran from the public was apparently part of a White House strategy for reducing the potential damage of publishing the estimate with the inclusion of dissenting views.
As of early October, officials involved in the NIE were throwing their hands up in frustration over the refusal of the administration to allow the estimate to be released, according to the former intelligence officer. But the Iran NIE is now expected to be circulated within the administration in late November, says Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and founder of the anti-war group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The release of the Iran NIE would certainly intensify the bureaucratic political struggle over Iran policy. If the NIE includes both dissenting views on key issues, a campaign of selective leaking to news media of language from the NIE that supports Cheneys line on Iran will soon follow, as well as leaks of the dissenting views by his opponents.
Both sides may be anticipating another effort by Cheney to win Bushs approval of a significant escalation of military pressure on Iran in early 2008.
© 2007 Inter Press Service
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/09/5117/
those lying, warmongering mother****ers!
Bush is screwing this country up bigtime. I use to watch the 700 Club but it seems like that idiot Pat Robertson seems to Bush's best friend and is using the religious community to support him. I can't believe how blind some people can be when it comes to religion! 
I said all that to say this, as long as this idiot is in office, we are a button away from WW3. He and Cheney seem intent on finding dirt on certain countries, particularly Iraq and Iran, when reports have come back that there is nothing there.
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....helping them is not, LOL...not something....we, uh...would....we'd never want to DO that! 
