Back in 2007, US intelligence officials — fearing an overestimation of WMD capabilities similar to Iraq circa 2002 — severely lowballed their analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Their product, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, put the Bush administration on the defensive and claimed that the Iranians had stopped work on the development of a nuclear warhead. Two years later, vindication comes from a most unlikely source: German intelligence.
Iran still clings to the lie that their program exists for peaceful purposes. But even a disinterested observer can draw the obvious connections between their aggressive development of atomic weaponry and the near identical behavior of neophyte nuclear power, North Korea. Both booted UN weapon inspectors a few years prior to their program reaching full maturation, both initially claimed that they wanted nuclear power, not nuclear bombs. Both are laboring intensively to develop a delivery system capable of reaching targets as far away as the continental United States and both have easily circumvented UN sanctions designed to halt bomb construction. Just like the 2007 NIE, the North Korean nuclear program during the 1990s had its share of intelligence community naysayers. President Obama, with his strategy of diplomatic engagement, is traveling down the same road as President Clinton without differentiating between the intentions of the two nations. The Norks wanted a bomb to extort regional power players into sustaining their dying regime, a successful strategy during the Clinton and Bush years. The Iranians, however, have guarded their weapon program with furious secrecy and don’t need UN sanctions scrubbed to survive. That’s evidence enough that they have no intention of trading away their program at President Obama’s bargaining table.
