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Monday, December 17, 2007

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
Israel downplaying Iran nuke threat?
PM warns officials against openly criticizing U.S. intel report

Posted: December 17, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Aaron Klein

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – According to informed sources in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office has been pressuring security officials and government ministers against contradicting an American intelligence estimate released earlier this month finding Iran suspended it's nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The information comes as Olmert's office has been formulating its official response to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, now accepting most of its conclusions in spite of Olmert's initial rejections and despite cabinet ministers' and Israeli security officials' fierce opposition.

Olmert told government ministers in his security cabinet yesterday during a closed-door meeting to refrain from making any statements about the NIE report, stating declarations against the U.S. estimate "don't help" Israel's relationship with America, according to participants inside the Knesset meeting.

Also, officials in the Israeli Defense Forces and Shin Bet Security Services told WND their offices received directives to stop briefing reporters concerning Israeli security information alleging Iran has continued its nuclear weapons program.

Multiple Knesset members and security officials in recent days have been speaking out against the NIE report.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, who previously headed the Shin Bet, issued Israel's harshest criticism yet of the NIE, calling it a "misconception" that threatened to spark a surprise Middle East war.

"Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat," said Dichter during a speech this weekend.

"A mistaken conception by the world's leading power is not just an internal American issue. It has to alarm Israel and many other countries," Dichter said.

Last week, Knesset Member Yitzhak Cohen, a member of the Shas party, a key coalition partner in Olmert's government, slammed the NIE report as "[contradicting] the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons."

He went on to accuse the U.S. of intentionally minimizing the Iranian threat, comparing the situation to reports released by the U.S. during the Holocaust that Jews were not being killed in spite of information possessed by American intelligence of the existence of concentration and extermination camps.

"In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians' intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the Holocaust," Cohen was quoted as stating.

The NIE, which represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, released its report judging with "high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The report judged with "moderate confidence" that Iran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.

"But we do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons," stated the NIE report.

The report totaled nine pages. The first page was a colored cover with no information. Four pages gave the background history of the NIE, with one page focusing on the scope of the report on Iran and another page including a coded chart on how to read the report. One page compared the report to a previous estimate.

Only two pages focused on the report's key judgments on Iran, which were worded as blanket statements and which were not backed up by any specific information released in the report.

The NIE report said some agencies judged Iran could produce enough enriched fissile material to make a nuclear weapon within two years – in line with some Israeli estimates – while other agencies, including the State Department's Intelligence and Research office, believe the earliest likely time Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium would be 2013.

At first, Olmert delicately criticized the report, raising some questions about its conclusions:

"According to the assessment, Iran had a nuclear weapons program until at least 2003 and there is no positive report giving any explanation of where this program has disappeared to," Olmert said.

But according to sources in Jerusalem, Olmert's office is ready to accept upwards of 90 percent of the NIE's conclusions, but will still maintain Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

Israel last week quietly sent a delegation of intelligence officials – mostly IDF military intelligence officers – to brief their American counterparts on Israeli information that Iran continues its drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

Security sources said the intelligence officials, in Washington and Virginia, presented information Iran indeed suspended its weapons program when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, but restarted it several months later, including in locations that may be unknown to U.S. intelligence.

Numerous news media reports in recent days have attempted to punch holes in the NIE report.

London's Sunday Telegraph quoted a senior British official stating the UK believes Iran deliberately fed misinformation to the U.S. about its nuclear program.

The official expressed skepticism about the findings in the NIE report.

"We are skeptical about the report's findings. It's not as if the American intelligence are regarded as brilliant performers in that region," the official was quoted as telling the Telegraph.

"[The Iranians] say things on the phone because they know we are up on the phones. They say black is white," the official was quoted as saying.

In an interview last week with Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, said the report ignored Iranian uranium enrichment activities at the Iranian city of Natanz because that project was not secret.

Editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times also questioned the NIE report. The Los Angeles Times quoted an expert questioning whether the report sufficiently stressed Iran's enrichment activities.

In an interview last week with Tovia Singer, a radio host for Israel National News, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich slammed the NIE report as "fundamentally dishonest."

The NIE report was written by three former State Department officials who were "deeply opposed to what President Bush is doing," and who wrote the report "to maximize confusion," Gingrich told Singer.

Gingrich characterized the NIE as "very misleading, very destructive and very unfortunate ... almost a bureaucratic coup d'etat."

To interview Aaron Klein, contact Tim Bueler Public Relations by e-mail, or call (530) 401-3285