THE HEADLINE for the lead story in yesterday’s Washington Post was “Iran Is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb.” The story itself is based on leaked portions of a January 2005 national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iran, whose annex apparently contains a revised assessment by American intelligence of the time Iran needs to produce a nuclear weapon. Previous estimates had Iran possibly producing a weapon in five years or less. There are several points worth noting about this story.
* First, the Post sets this revised estimate off against “forceful public statements by the White House” and “administration officials” that “Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal.” But, of course, the two are not in contradiction with each other. The fact that the intelligence community is increasing the estimated time it would take Iran to build a weapon does not undercut in any way the fact that Tehran seems determined to have nuclear weapons. As the story itself notes, a senior intelligence official “familiar with the findings said that ‘it is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons.'”
