White House Fought NIE Over an Old Charge

White House Fought NIE Over an Old Charge
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (IPS) - The reported White House resistance to the National Intelligence Estimate’s conclusion that Iran had abandoned a nuclear weapons programme in 2003 was an effort to save a political tactic the George W. Bush administration had been using since early 2004, despite the absence of an intelligence analysis to support it.1211 03

The charge that Iran had a secret weapons programme was originally devised to build international support for sanctions — and even potential use of force — against Iran at a time when Iran was not enriching uranium.

But in 2006, the hawks added the allegation of a secret Iranian uranium enrichment programme paralleling the publicly acknowledged programme to bolster the argument that Iran must not be allowed to have any enrichment, even if carefully limited to far below a weapon-related level and intrusively monitored.

The original Bush administration argument was that Iranian uranium enrichment at Natanz was prima facie evidence of a “nuclear weapons programme”. On Feb. 23, 2003 the State Department charged that Iran had exhibited “an ambitious rush to develop a nuclear fuel cycle, whose true purpose can only be to produce fissile material for its nuclear weapons programme”.

That line took advantage of the widespread impression that the Natanz facility was illegal when it was revealed by the anti-regime National Council of Resistance in mid-2002, even though its construction was in compliance with Iran’s safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

When Iran voluntarily suspended its programme of uranium enrichment as part of its agreement with Britain, France and Germany in October 2003, however, it forced the Bush administration to come up with the idea of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/11/5754/