huh?

I’m as stumped as everyone else about the NIE report on Iran’s nuclear status. Essentially, our intelligence agencies have done a 180 since 2005.

What could account for such a turnaround? Right now, there are too many variables to consider to make sense of it all. Most interesting to me has been the reaction abroad, reported by the NYT’s Elaine Sciolino:

Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … The French Foreign Ministry said there would be no comment until Tuesday….

Then there’s Israel:

In Israel, officials said there would be no official response on Monday.

But a senior Israeli official said that “the Israeli government is familiar with the report,” and that Iran was a major topic of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s meeting with President Bush last Wednesday, after the Annapolis meeting.

The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said Israel remained extremely concerned. “We think there is enough information in the report to give a strong factual basis to our very real concerns about the Iranian nuclear program,” the official said.

And a new report from abroad, published this morning at 8:30 here in New York, indicates that everyone is skeptical and proceeding with caution:

Iran Welcomes U.S. Report While Paris Wants More Sanctions

The remarks of one European are the most interesting of all, revealing cui bono[e.a.]:

A European security source familiar with intelligence on Iran said the change of American stance was welcome, and would undermine the position of U.S. hawks.

“The American agencies have in essence come closer to the position of the European ones,” the source said.

“I think a political process (in dealing with Tehran) is more of an option than what we’ve perhaps been seeing from the hawks in the United States, the positioning for a military attack on Iran and so on.”

The official said there was “no definitive proof either way” as to whether Iran had halted a nuclear arms program in 2003. “And … we keep seeing (Iranian) procurement attempts in Europe … to acquire proliferation-relevant material.”

So: No one is saying that Iran hasn’t halted its nuclear ambitions. In fact, there’s ample evidence they’re very energetic on behalf of their larger program. The question is: why release this report now? cui bono?
Obviously: those who want to take military action against Iran off the table, and to thoroughly discredit Iran hawks. So it looks like a massive political hit job.

But there are so many other possibilities: maybe Iran did shut down its “nuclear arms effort” in 2003, as the NYT says in its headline–and that it did so out of fear, in reaction to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and that it has simply been doing a lot of chest-pounding for a couple of years as a diversionary tactic. There’s also the possibility, of course, that the NIE is dead wrong.

There are other loose threads in this story: Yesterday, the Commentary blog Contentions reminded us about the Iranian defector from last summer. (And today on Contentions, it’s Podhoretz vs. Podhoretz!)

Upshot: I’m stumped but deeply suspicious. This doesn’t pass the smell test. Occam’s razor (the simplest answer) would indicate that the NIE was wrong in 2005 and is right in 2007. It just doesn’t wash, though.