Back in November 2007, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) released a declassified summary of an authoritative National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) declaring with “high confidence” that four years earlier “Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Buried in a footnote was the fact that the summary was only referring to one—and far from the most important—component of Iran’s nuclear project. The other portions of the Iranian bomb effort—most significantly, uranium enrichment—were continuing apace.
The damage caused by the misleading document was immense, and traveled in two directions. On one side, it had the political effect of removing any possibility of public support for a Bush administration military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. It also undermined the case for economic sanctions. What would be the point, after all, of targeting a weapons project that our intelligence agencies were declaring had already been halted?
