How Long Until Iran Gets the Bomb? No One Has a Clue

Iran: How far from the Bomb? That was one of the key questions asked of newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing on Tuesday. Why had McConnell avoided this front-burner issue in his prepared remarks? Because an honest answer would have been: "Beats the hell out of us. Despite the billions that American taxpayers have sunk into improving U.S. intelligence, we can only guess."

But the question is certainly a fair and urgent one. A mere three weeks into the job, McConnell can perhaps be forgiven for merely reciting the hazy forecast of his predecessor, John Negroponte, and the obscurantist jargon that has been introduced into key national intelligence estimates (NIEs) in recent years). McConnell had these two sentences committed to memory:

"We assess that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon. The information is incomplete, but we assess that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon early-to-mid-next decade."

At that point, McConnell received gratuitous reinforcement from Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. With something of a flourish, Maples emphasized that it was "with high confidence" that DIA "assesses that Iran remains determined to develop nuclear weapons."

After the judgments in the Oct. 1, 2002 estimate assessing weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq -- judgments stated with "high confidence" -- turned out to be wrong, National Intelligence Council officials apparently concluded that defining "assess" might help cover their asses. The council took the unprecedented step of including a short glossary in its recent NIE on Iraq:

"When we use words such as 'we assess,' we are trying to convey an analytical assessment or judgment. These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information are not a fact, proof, or knowledge. Some analytical judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks. In either type of judgment, we do not have "evidence" that shows something to be a fact."

So caveat emptor. Beware the verisimilitude conveyed by "we assess." It can have a lemming effect, as evidenced Tuesday by the automatic head bobbing that greeted Sen. Lindsay Graham's (R-SC) clever courtroom-style summary argument at the hearing, "We all agree, then, that the Iranians are trying to get nuclear weapons."

Quick, someone, please give Sen. Graham the National Intelligence Council's new glossary.

Shoddy Record on Iran

Iran is a difficult intelligence target. Understood. Even so, U.S. intelligence performance "assessing" Iran's progress toward a nuclear capability does not inspire confidence. The only quasi-virtue readily observable in intelligence estimates is the foolish consistency described by Emerson as "the hobgoblin of little minds." In 1995, U.S. intelligence started consistently "assessing" that Iran was "within five years" of reaching a nuclear weapons capability. But, year after year, that got a little tired ... and even embarrassing. So in 2005, when the most recent NIE was issued (and then leaked to the Washington Post), the timeline was extended and given still more margin for error. Basically, it was moved ten years out to 2015 but, in a fit of caution, the estimators created the expression "early-to-mid next decade."

Small wonder that the commission picked by President George W. Bush to investigate the intelligence community's performance on weapons of mass destruction complained that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about Iran. Shortly after the most recent estimate was completed in June 2005, Robert G. Joseph, the neo-conservative who succeeded John Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control, was asked whether Iran had a nuclear effort under way. He replied:

"I don't know quite how to answer that because we don't have perfect information or perfect understanding. But the Iranian record, plus what the Iranian leaders have said ... lead us to conclude that we have to be highly skeptical."

Is help on the way? A fresh national intelligence estimate on Iran has been in preparation for several months -- far too leisurely a pace in the circumstances. Will it have any appreciable effect in informing policy? Don't count on it.