I thought I was the only one who found this worrisome, but Ace is on the same page, as are others. It’s now widely speculated (including in The Guardian and on Fox News) that the source for the new NIE report is a defected Iranian general. In this post-Iraq intelligence world, I’m skeptical anytime an NIE report is based on intelligence from a defected anything. They’ve not always been reliable.

Then Ace points to something else I hadn’t realized regarding the new estimate.

While everyone spins this as a claim that Iran is denuclearized, the report says that there is “high confidence” the program was suspended for a period and merely “moderate confidence” it is still suspended.”

He has a translation, but I try to keep this place PG-13. More from USAToday:

For all of the effort spent trying to determine the scope of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it was a media visit to Iran that helped the intelligence community reconsider its assessment of the program, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.

Photographs taken during the media visit this year weren’t decisive in determining when Iran stopped its nuclear program, said an officer who helped prepare a National Intelligence Estimate released Monday.

But the photos from Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility were reviewed by intelligence analysts who concluded Iran continues to face “significant technical problems” in using the facility to enrich uranium, the officer said…

In revising their estimate, intelligence officers said they were mindful of “lessons learned” from a 2002 report that overstated the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“We had to show our homework,” one said, by justifying the new judgments to intelligence agency leaders who OK’d the final version…

The intelligence officials also cited Libya’s decision in 2003 to stop its nuclear program and the arrest of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan as reasons Iran stopped trying to develop weapons.

The estimate, the collective judgment of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, said Iran had not restarted its weapons program as of mid-2007 but could resume weapons development.

The intelligence community concluded in 2005 that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

Technical limitations, both estimates concluded, make it hard for Iran to produce weapons-grade uranium before the early years of the next decade, at a minimum.

Here’s the funny part: The same report that led us into a war Democrats now want us out of, is being touted by the same people as evidence of Iran’s cooperation. We’re constantly reminded that our intelligence was wrong in 2002. Now, the same report which contained that false information, Democrats have no issue taking at face value.

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