Cornering Iran

Whenever you hear the words "Iran" and "nuclear program" in close proximity over the next few weeks, please think of this:

The George W. Bush administration's adoption of a policy of threatening to use military force against Iran disregarded a series of official intelligence estimates going back many years that consistently judged Iran's fear of a U.S. attack to be a major motivating factor in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials who were directly involved in producing CIA estimates on Iran revealed in separate interviews with IPS that the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Iran have consistently portrayed its concerns about the military threat posed by the United States as a central consideration in Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

Paul Pillar, who managed the writing of all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005 as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told IPS that all of the NIEs on Iran during that period addressed the Iranian fears of U.S. attack explicitly and related their desire for nuclear weapons to those fears.

Logically, then, if the predominant concern of the US and Israel is to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, then the firebrand rhetoric coming out of Washington and Tel Aviv should abate considerably.

But if the alleged nuclear program is being used largely to ramp up the threat of Iran to the West in order to justify pre-existing goals of regime change, as I claim, then I doubt you'll hear much of a change in tone as we get down to the wire. So stay tuned.