Myth & Mad

The Myth of the Mad Mullahs

By David Ignatius

Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page A29

In the entryway of "Persia House," as the CIA's new Iran operations division is known internally, hangs a haunting life-size poster of Hussein, the martyr revered by Iran's Shiite Muslims. The division was created last year to push more aggressively for information about Iran's nuclear program and other secrets.

Creating Persia House and spinning off Iran from its old home in the agency's Near East division were part of a broader effort to "plus up" collection of secret information, in the words of one senior official. The CIA made it easy for disgruntled Iranians to send information directly to the agency in cases known as "virtual walk-ins." The National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations made similar drives to steal more of Iran's secrets.

Meanwhile, the intelligence analysts responsible for Iran were given new encouragement to think outside the box. To break the lock-step culture that allowed the disastrous mistake on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Deputy Director of National Intelligence Thomas Fingar ordered that analysts be given more information about sources and, rather than trying to fit information into preexisting boxes to prove a case, they should simply explain what it meant.

All these strands converged in the bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that was released Monday. That document was as close to a U-turn as one sees in the intelligence world. The community dropped its 2005 judgment that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons" and instead said, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" because of international pressure.

The secret intelligence that produced this reversal came from multiple channels -- human sources as well as intercepted communications -- that arrived in June and July. At that time, a quite different draft of the Iran NIE was nearly finished. But the "volume and character" of the new information was so striking, says a senior official, that "we decided we've got to go back." It was this combination of data from different sources that gave the analysts "high confidence" the covert weapons program had been stopped in 2003. This led them to reject an alternative scenario (one of six) pitched by a "red team" of counterintelligence specialists that the new information was a deliberate Iranian deception.

A senior official describes the summer's windfall as "a variety of reporting that unlocked stuff we had, which we didn't understand fully before." That earlier information included technical drawings from an Iranian laptop computer purloined in 2004 that showed Iranian scientists had been designing an efficient nuclear bomb that could be delivered by a missile. Though some U.S. analysts had doubted the validity of the laptop evidence, they now believe it was part of the covert "weaponization" program that was shelved in the fall of 2003.

The most important finding of the NIE isn't the details about the scope of nuclear research; there remains some disagreement about that. Rather, it's the insight into the greatest mystery of all about the Islamic republic, which is the degree of rationality and predictability of its decisions.

For the past several years, U.S. intelligence analysts have doubted hawkish U.S. and Israeli rhetoric that Iran is dominated by "mad mullahs" -- clerics whose fanatical religious views might lead to irrational decisions. In the new NIE, the analysts forcefully posit an alternative view of an Iran that is rational, susceptible to diplomatic pressure and, in that sense, can be "deterred."

"Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs," states the NIE. Asked if this meant the Iranian regime would be "deterrable" if it did obtain a weapon, a senior official responded, "That is the implication." He added: "Diplomacy works. That's the message."

While the intelligence community regards Iran as a rational actor, the workings of the regime remain opaque -- a "black box," in the words of one senior official. "You see the outcome [in the fall 2003 decision to halt the covert program] but not the decision-making process." This official said it was "logical, but we don't have the evidence" that Iran felt less need for nuclear weapons after the United States toppled its mortal enemy, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, in April 2003.

The debate about what the NIE should mean for U.S. policy toward Iran is just beginning. But for the intelligence community, this rebuttal of conventional wisdom will restore some integrity after the Iraq WMD debacle. In challenging the previous certitudes about Iran and the Bomb, the NIE recalls the admonition many decades ago by the godfather of CIA analysts, Sherman Kent: "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one's bigotry, and to do a little conscientious introspection."

A poem by Shakespear

 

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Russian & Iran

Russian Roulette on Iran

by Michael Rubin
Wall Street Journal
October 3, 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1762

Last week, the United States turned to the United Nations in an attempt to increase pressure on Iran. The U.S. wanted to expand sanctions against the budding nuclear power.

Neither China nor Russia would go along. And faced with the prospect of one or the other vetoing sanctions at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice punted. She put off further action against Iran until at least November.

It's hard to see how much will change in a month. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is firm in his opposition to sanctions. "Interference by way of new sanctions would mean undermining" the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as it puts pressure on Iran, he said.

This is a charade. The statement came three days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that, based on his talks with IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei, he considered the nuclear file closed. Not only could Iran continue enriching uranium regardless of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the Iranian president said, but Tehran could also export its enriched uranium and nuclear know-how to other Muslim countries.

Yet, the Bush administration continues to seek agreement with Russia with Ms. Rice's undersecretary Nicholas Burns talking about Washington's desire for "compromise" with Moscow. British Foreign Minister David Milbrand is no better. He puts unity above all else: "The most important thing is that the unanimity of the international community."

The debate over Iran then reflects two much larger debates: Whether foreign policy should be unilateral or multilateral and whether it should be based on "realism" or on principle.

Unilateralism, of course, has become a dirty word since the invasion of Iraq. But international venality -- expressed in French and Russian business deals with Saddam Hussein -- had undercut sanctions against Iraq. That left Mr. Bush with little choice other than to stick with a failing multilateralist policy or to act unilaterally.

Now we're seeing that in the case of Iran, "realism" and multilateralism may be mutually exclusive in the effort to curtail proliferation. Or put another way, multilateralism empowers Moscow and Moscow isn't inclined to make a multilateral sanctions regime effective.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, realism is a zero-sum game that maximizes Russian power at U.S. expense. The U.S. can seek Russian cooperation, but for Russian realists, inaction looks like the best option. A nuclear capable Iran is inimical to Russian interests, but Mr. Putin may have seen in Mr. Bush's soul a commitment to deny Tehran nuclear capability at any cost. So why not profit both financially and strategically?

Russia and China have made billions as enablers to Iran's military ambitions. Less than a month after the 9/11 terror attacks, Moscow signed a $7 billion arms deal with Tehran. The Iranian government has paid Russia's state-owned Atomstroiexport more than $1 billion to construct the Bushehr nuclear plant. A 2003 CIA issued report credited Russian, Chinese and North Korean experts for Iran's ballistic-missile advances.

Alexander Denisov, deputy director of the Russian Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said bluntly in 2005, "First of all, we have to count in our national interests. In Syria, we have a huge market, over 80% of Soviet-made arms. The same is true about Iran." Late last year, Russia's state-run Rosoboronexport shipped a $700 million air-defense and missile system to Iran. Last month, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said his government had won a Russian commitment to complete the Bushehr reactor prior to a visit by Mr. Putin to Tehran later this month.

While a nuclear Iran would threaten U.S. national security and shred the international non-proliferation regime, a U.S. military strike on Iran would be costly. Iranians may find Mr. Ahmadinejad odious, but they may respond to a strike by rallying around the flag. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is also capable of striking anywhere from Baghdad to Buenos Aires and is able to set Lebanon and even northern Israel aflame.

On Sept. 29, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the ability to monitor all movement in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf. The threat is clear: Any conflict with Iran could drive oil over $120 a barrel. This would likely hurt the U.S. economy, but it would also accelerate Russia's return to a dominant position in the world.

Russian realists relish such a scenario. The Kremlin has converted its multibillion-dollar oil windfall into power and influence. Mr. Putin has increased defense procurement by more than 50% over the past two years. Russia has developed a new class of nuclear submarines and a new generation of nuclear missiles. Moscow leverages money into military strength.

Already, Russia uses European aversion to conflict to its advantage. The same European leaders upon whose good faith Ms. Rice pegs U.S. national security have been willing to demote the Czech Republic and Poland to second-class status within NATO to assuage the Kremlin.

During the George H.W. Bush administration, Ms. Rice was the point woman for Soviet affairs on the National Security Council. She distinguished herself for poor instincts with her opposition to Ukrainian independence, among other issues. What Ms. Rice believes conciliatory, Mr. Putin sees as weakness. She may confuse realism with idealism; Mr. Putin, the former KGB apparatchik, will not.

Realism may prevail, but not Washington's realism. The defiant Mr. Ahmadinejad offers the White House a stark choice: Live with a nuclear Iran, or take action to stop it. Winning Russian approval is a chimera, delaying an inevitable decision.

Mr. Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.