Another "slam dunk"?
Sloppy attempt to lay the ground for a potential rush to war against Iran

Gary Sick
August 26, 2006
iranian.com

The Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy has prepared a report to the House Select Committee on Intelligence that is sharply critical of US intelligence, implying that intelligence agencies are unwilling to draw the appropriate lessons about Iran. There were stories about this subject in the Washington Post and the New York Times on August 24. The original document can be found here.

In preparation for an interview with VOA, I read through most of the document. If you read to the end of the text, pp. 24-5, you will find a series of exceptionally bland recommendations (need better analysis, more Farsi speakers, more translation, more human intelligence, etc.) that have been voiced repeatedly by serious observers of the intelligence community.

But that is not the purpose of this "study," which is really intended as a sort of Team B report of what at least one Hill staffer believes the intelligence community should be reporting on Iran. (The staffer is Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer who had been a special assistant to John Bolton but who lost his job when Bolton was excessed at the time when Condi Rice came to the State Dept.; so this report can reasonably be seen as the world -- and Iran -- according to Bolton and his associates.)

If you are going to take on the entire US intelligence community, it is a very good idea to at least get your basic facts straight. On a very quick reading, I found a statement on p. 9 claiming that the 164 centifuges at the Iranian Natanz site are "currently enriching uranium to weapons grade." There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true -- and a lot of evidence that the tiny bit of enriched uranium produced at this site was reactor grade (c. 2.5%? vs weapons grade c. 95%?). It may be true that Fleitz, and perhaps many in the neo-con community, suspect that weapons grade enrichment is either covertly underway or is planned, but their suspicions should not be allowed to substitute for facts.

Throughout the report, there is careful documentation of any & all criticism that the IAEA inspectors have produced or any questions that they may have raised about Iran's performance. However, there is no mention at all of any of the IAEA conclusions that they find no evidence of weapons production or activity. Some people will recall that the IAEA inspectors, in their caution, were closer to the truth about Iraqi WMD than, say, the Vice President's office.

The summary of the study claims that Iran has "the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East," and it focuses attention on the 1300-km Iranian Shahab-3 missile and its possible future development for carrying a nuclear warhead, including a handy map of exaggerated ranges for the Shahab-3 and (as yet non-existent) Shahab-4 demonstrating that everything from Monaco to Moscow to Mumbai is vulnerable to Iranian strikes.

A very quick check of the study's own sources revealed that Iran has "some" Shahab-3 missiles, but probably not more than a handful. By contrast Israel has 50 ballistic missiles with range greater than the Shahab and configured for nuclear warheads that are stored "nearby." Saudi Arabia, we need to recall, has 40-60 long-range missiles, each with a range of 2650 km and all capable of carrying a 2500 kg warhead, clearly the largest inventory of its kind in the Middle East.

The author of this repoprt did not have the time or inclination to talk to any of the intelligence organizations that he was indicting. If he had, he might at least have caught some of the embarrassing bloopers in the text. Yet the report was rushed to public release in order to coincide with Iran's reply to the Europeans (for maximum publicity impact), without even waiting for it to be reviewed by the full committee.

The irony, therefore, is stunning when Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who heads the House Committee, explained the rush by commenting that "We want to avoid another 'slam dunk.'" The famous "slam dunk" judgment on Iraq's WMD was, of course, the result of selective reading of available intelligence (which some call cherry-picking), plus a willingness by some to subordinate the (often prosaic) facts to (sensational) ideological conviction.

That is exactly what has happened in this report. It is a sloppy attempt to lay the ground for another slam dunk judgment and a potential rush to war. It deserves to be recognized for what it is. Comment

Gary Sick is Adjunct Professor of International Affairs and Acting Director of the Middle East Institute at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. He served on the U.S. National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan.