The back-pedalling suggests US military chiefs warned against attacking Iran, says Robert Fox

December 05, 2007

By The First Post
Copyright The Fist Post

The US intelligence assessment that Iran ceased a secret nuclear weapons programme in 2003 closes a huge chapter in the aggressive foreign policy of George W Bush and Tony Blair towards the nations of their so-called 'Axis of Evil'.

If the Americans, in the famous words of the July 2002 Downing Street memo, were prepared to 'fix the intelligence' for the case for war on Iraq, now they are unfixing it for the case to attack Iran.
The latest US National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, reports that it appears that having stopped its secret nuclear weapons programme in the summer of 2003, Iran hasn't restarted it. This makes sense.

After the US and British attack on Iraq, the Iranians asked for talks - which the outriders of the Bush posse, Cheney and Rumsfeld, refused. It proved to be a colossal missed opportunity, as former Secretary of State James Baker has repeatedly underlined.

The NIE report signals there is no likelihood of a US strike, pre-emptive or otherwise, on Iran. If Cheney and Bush were to have their Dr Strangelove moment, and go ahead in the teeth of opposition from Congress and the armed services, they would be impeached. The Israelis - who predictably challenged the US finding today - are on their own.

It is now pretty clear that the chiefs of the armed services have warned the White House that a campaign of air strikes on Iran is unlikely to succeed. Some military sites are unknown, and sustained bombing is likely to kill thousands of civilians. It could start a war across the Gulf.

The biggest question raised by the NIE audit is about intelligence itself and the way that the Bush and Blair teams shamelessly put it to short-sighted political use. The credibility of the intelligence agencies in both Britain and the US is severely damaged by their part in the casual adventurism of the administrations in both since 2001.