As part of the current and ongoing effort to demonize further the Islamic Republic, there has been an uptick in media stories, drawing on conveniently leaked Western intelligence assessments, highlighting Tehran’s allegedly looming acquisition of nuclear weapons. One of these stories, from The Associated Press, see here, seems particularly emblematic, so we want to look at it more closely.
The story opens by citing an “intelligence assessment shared with The Associated Press” from “a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region”, which depicts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as wanting “to shed the nation’s secrecy and forge ahead openly with developing nuclear weapons” but also as “opposed by the clerical leadership, which is worried about international reaction to such a move.” The story notes that this particular assessment “cannot be confirmed and contrasts with assessments by other countries that view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as relatively moderate on the nuclear issue compared to the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”.
Now, obviously, the first and second assessments cannot both be true, which should prompt some very hard questions about how good any of these services’ sources are. (Does any nation, in fact, … >>>
