ANOTHER VIEW - A Good Question From India

"How good is US intelligence on Iran?" from The Statesman, one of India's oldest English newspapers founded 1875

While recognizing the "rays of optimism" of diplomatic efforts with Iran on their nuclear program, it asks a very pertinent question.....

Could the unanimity of American intelligence be “déjà vu all over again”, only the reverse of the Iraq WMD fiasco? In the lead-up to the Iraq war, American intelligence agencies expressed “high confidence” that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programmes.” They were dead wrong.

In the aftermath of that intelligence failure, the Silverman-Robb Commission examined the capacity of US intelligence agencies to assess WMD developments abroad. It concluded: “Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programmes of many of the world’s most dangerous actors.”

Consider also that members of the CIA have described the agency’s covert action abilities inside Iran from 2000 through 2004 as “unchanged: they’re zero”. As James Risen reports in State of War, a US intelligence blunder allowed Iranian security officials to “roll up” the American network of spies in Iran. Most important revelations on Iran’s nuclear programme have come either from informants who “walk in” to US embassies or from Iranian dissident groups with uncertain agendas.

This is a very good question. Should Americans take our Intelligence Community's evaluation of Iran's nuclear program at face value? What makes us think that their evaluation of Iran is any better that it was for Iraq before we attacked that country? Past performance is more valuable than today's promises.