Slate's Bizbox
fighting words: A wartime lexicon.

Abolish the CIADestroying the interrogation tapes amounts to mutiny and treason.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Dec. 10, 2007, at 12:09 PM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. Click image to expand.

It seems flabbergastingly improbable that President George W. Bush learned of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iranian nuclear ambitions only a few days before the rest of us did, but the haplessness of his demeanor suggested that he might, in fact, have been telling the truth. After all, had the administration known for any appreciable length of time that the mullahs had hit the pause button on their program in late 2003, it would have been in a position to make a claim that is quite probably true, namely, that our overthrow of Saddam Hussein had impressed the Iranians in much the same way as it impressed the Libyans and made them at least reconsider their willingness to continue flouting the Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Given that the examination of the immense Libyan stockpile also disclosed the fingerprints that led back to the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuke-mart in Pakistan, the removal of Saddam from the chessboard has had more effect in curbing the outlaw WMD business than it is normally given credit for.)

Nobody seems entirely sure what caused our intelligence agencies to reverse their opinion, but it seems rather likely that the defection and/or abduction of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, Iran's former deputy minister of defense, in February of this year, has something to do with it. Asgari's ostensibly principal job had been that of liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but his debriefing could also have helped confirm pre-existing surmises about Iran's reining-in of its nuclear ambitions.

Which is the most that can be said about those ambitions. It is completely false for anybody to claim, on the basis of this admitted "estimate," that Iran has ceased to be a candidate member of the fatuously named nuclear "club." It has the desire to acquire the weaponry, it retains the means to do so, and it has been caught lying and cheating about the process. If it suspended some overtly military elements of the project out of a justifiable apprehension in 2003, it has energetically persisted in the implicit aspects—most notably the installation of gas centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and the building of a heavy water reactor at Arak. All that the estimate has done is to define weaponry down and to suggest a distinction without much difference between a "civilian" and a "military" dimension of the same program. The acquisition of enriched uranium and of plutonium, for any purpose, is identical with the acquisition of a thermonuclear weapons capacity. Iran continues to strive to produce both, neither of which, as it happens, are required for its ostensible civilian energy needs.

The briefing that I was given by the British Embassy in Tehran in 2005, showing the howlingly glaring discrepancy between what Iran claims and what Iran does, is not in the least challenged by the most recent conclusions. To say that Iran has "stopped" rather than paused its program is to offer an opinion, not to present a finding. (For more on this, see the excellent article by Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin in the Dec. 6 New York Times, and also Jonathan Schell's Dec. 9 piece on the Guardian's Web site.) The mullahs are steadily amassing the uranium and plutonium ingredients of a weapon and will indeed soon be able to pause, along with other countries, like Japan, at the point where only a brief interlude and a swift spurt of effort would put them in full possession of the bomb.

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Imagine if...
Hiatt | What if McCain had waged his campaign based on respect?
Editorial: Meddlesome PalinKing: The Danger of Palin Power