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Bush lauds 'great discovery'
04/12/2007 21:14 - (SA)
Washington - President George W. Bush said on Tuesday that a "great discovery" as recently as August prompted the US intelligence community's stunning reversal of its long-held view that Iran had an active nuclear weapons programme.
Bush provided no details on the nature of the new intelligence, which set off an in-depth intelligence review of the evidence and assumptions that underpinned a 2005 assessment, which had held with "high confidence" that Iran was determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, came to Bush in August and said: "We have some new information."
"He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyse," Bush said at a White House news conference in describing the encounter.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were not formally briefed until Wednesday on the intelligence community's new finding that Iran had had a covert nuclear weapons programme but halted it in 2003 - a bombshell with major implications for US policy.
The National Intelligence Estimate, as the assessment is called, judged "with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years".
Because of "intelligence gaps," the report said, the intelligence community had "moderate confidence" that Tehran had not restarted the programme as of mid-2007 and did not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
'Part of government policy'
"Without getting into sources and methods, I believe that the intelligence community has made a great discovery, and they've analysed the discovery, and it's now a part of our government policy," Bush said.
The Washington Post reported that the new information included intercepts of conversations between Iranian military commanders.
A senior Iranian military official was overheard complaining in one intercepted conversation that the nuclear programme had been halted years earlier, the Post said, citing a source familiar with the intelligence.
It said more than 1 000 pieces of information were cited in footnotes to the 140-page classified report, which represents the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies.
Info greeted with scepticism
The new information was initially greeted with deep scepticism by top CIA officials and others who feared that Iran was engaging in strategic deception to hide a continuing covert programme.
"You want to make sure it's not disinformation. You want to make sure the piece of intelligence you have is real," Bush said, explaining why in October he had warned of the prospect of "World War III" over Iran's nuclear programme.
"And secondly, they want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered. If they think it's real, then what does it mean?"
Bush went on to say that he believes Iran remains a danger because a country that once had a covert nuclear weapons programme could also restart it.
Senior intelligence officials who briefed reporters on Monday on condition of anonymity said the review reinforced the 2005 estimate's conclusion that Iran did have a secret weapons programme, which Tehran has denied.
The new assessment concludes that international pressure and its growing isolation prompted Tehran to halt the programme in 2003, showing that it was more susceptible to world opinion than previously thought.
International pressure
In the same year, the US invaded Iraq, the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network was broken and Libya gave up its nuclear programme.
But it was not known whether other world events also had had an impact on the Iranian decision in addition to UN Security Council sanctions, the intelligence officials said.
However, they said there was an "evidentiary trail" that showed that Iran's decision to halt the nuclear weapons programme was in response to international pressure.
The officials also attributed the change in the assessment to stepped up intelligence gathering on Iran since 2005 and more rigorous analytical methods put into effect after the intelligence failures in Iraq.
A US intelligence estimate in 2002 that wrongly concluded that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction helped pave the way for the US invasion of Iran in March 2003.
- AFP
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