A Test of Intelligence

CAUGHT with no clothes on by the reversal in the assessment of Teheran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities by all 16 of his own spy agencies, the imperial occupant in the White House seems to be acting like a punch-drunk brawler who has been boxed into a corner and sees no way out but to keep on slugging. Undaunted by the National Intelligence Estimate which concluded with “high confidence” that Iran had halted development of a nuclear bomb four years ago, US President George Bush remains defiant and insists that “nothing’s changed”.

In a sense, one can understand why an American president on the last legs of his military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may have trouble digesting all that inopportune information on Iran. After all, the same “reliable sources” had warned him about Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and had expressed “high confidence” just two years ago that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons”. Certainly, the Iraq WMD howler and the about-turn on Iran raises questions about the accuracy and veracity of such intelligence. But the paranoid pronouncement that the report is a “warning signal” that Iran could “restart” its nuclear weapons programme, and the belligerent contention that “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous”, raise even more disturbing questions about the credibility of the Bush administration’s policy on Iran.

The report may have pre-empted a US military strike on Iran, but the attempt to portray the report as a validation of the Bush strategy and the continuation of the bellicose rhetoric suggests that there is likely to be little change to the US policy of political isolation, economic sanctions and regime change. Bush wants the international community to continue “to pressure the Iranian regime” when more economic sanctions are not likely to work. Neither will the dogmatic assumption of Iran’s nuclear ambition nor the demonisation of Iran as an irrational rogue nation. Iran’s decision to play the nuclear card, as the report said, is “guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon”. Instead of following the rush of blood to his head, now that the report lends support to the assertions that there has been no concrete evidence that Teheran has been secretly building a nuclear arsenal, Bush should seize the opportunity to open direct and unconditional talks with Iran to resolve the nuclear and other issues which have inflamed relations between the two countries.

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