NIE undermines our own efforts

The folly of the most recent National "Intelligence" Estimate is coming into bloom, with dangerous consequences for the world.

This folly was easy to recognize the minute the report was released: It deflated several years of steady, multinational effort to pressure the Islamic Republic of Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and left America and its allies in a weakened negotiating position.

The report came right as efforts were building to impose economic sanctions on Iran, and as a result, again allowed countries such as China to comfortably resume lucrative relations with Tehran.

The report declared that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 in response to international pressure. That was the storyline, anyway, which was picked up by news media around the world. But the report had much more to say, most importantly that Iran is continuing with its nuclear program for domestic energy. And as long as that program is in full swing, what's to stop the mullahs from restarting weaponry development, so we can read a completely different National Intelligence Estimate next year?

Consider that a National Intelligence Estimate released in 2005 included a "high confidence" judgement that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons."

Whether it was right or wrong, that position served the U.S., the Middle East and the Western world In pressuring Iran to back down on its nuclear ambitions without having to resort to heavy saber rattling, or worse, actual military action.

What did we get instead after this NIE was released? This week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was crowing in an interview that the report amounted to a "declaration of surrender" from Washington, D.C., in its long running stare-down with Iran.

Maybe that's something that some in Washington can swallow. But the Iranian stance is much more threatening to a country like Israel, where government officials are now estimating that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon as early as 2009.

As one of those officials put it to the Jerusalem Post this week, "Israel can't take the risk that Iran will be nuclear."

The world is a more dangerous place, just because of the bungling National Intelligence Estimate and the way it was perceived by the world.