As the old saying goes, just how stupid do they think we are? Apparently, very much so, if a new congressional committee report is any indication.

One might think that after all the post-mortems on politicization of intelligence leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, members of the US Congress might have learned a few things about not rushing in where angels fear to tread. But for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is any example foolishness seems to be its raison d’être.

Last Wednesday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the committee, released a report, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States. The not very subtle implication was that those who don’t agree Iran is a threat are fools. This is exactly the same sort of tactic that the White House was using in 2002 and 2003 when Vice President Dick Cheney was talking about mushroom clouds rising into the sky due to an Iraqi nuclear weapon.

The New York Times, which pretty much accepted the White House spin on Iraq, recognized the new report for what it is. It editorialized:

The last thing this country needs as it heads into this election season is another attempt to push the intelligence agencies to hype their conclusions about the threat from a Middle Eastern state. That’s what happened in 2002, when the administration engineered a deeply flawed document on Iraq that reshaped intelligence to fit President [George W] Bush’s policy. And history appeared to be repeating itself … when the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, released a garishly illustrated and luridly written document that is ostensibly dedicated to “helping the American people understand” that Iran’s fundamentalist regime and its nuclear ambitions pose a strategic threat to the United States.

Hoekstra is hardly a disinterested party in this. Earlier this year, citing an army report that units had dug up corroded canisters of chemical agent dating back decades, he and Senator Rick Santorum insisted that weapons of mass destruction had indeed been found in Iraq – a claim that not even Cheney or Defense Secretary Rumsfeld supported.
Nor is the report’s primary author disinterested either. The media has reported that Frederick Fleitz, who did his apprenticeship on politicization under US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, when the latter was under secretary of state for arms control and nonproliferation, and became his principal aide and chief enforcer while on loan from the CIA, primarily drafted the report.

It is important to note from the very outset that in terms of making a case against Iran in regard to its unconventional-weapons capabilities, the latest report is far from definitive. The cover letter notes that the assessment is based on “open-source materials”. Open-source material is a valuable source, but it is hardly definitive, as exemplified by the 88 footnotes referring to news reports and already-public government reports.

And insofar as open-source material is concerned the report reflects what can only charitably be called a highly selective culling of the available material. Let’s consider at length just one example of one-sidedness.

On page 11 the report states “Iran’s claim that its nuclear program is for electricity production appears doubtful in light of its large oil and natural gas reserves.  Iran’s natural gas reserves are the second largest in the world and the energy industry
estimates that Iran flares enough natural gas annually to generate electricity equivalent to the  output of four Bushehr reactors.”

However, the fact that Iran is ‘oil rich’ is not a reason to abandon other options of energy generation, and is certainly not evidence by itself of intent to build nuclear weapons.
In March 2004, the UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee said: “It is clear … that the arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side.” Some US arguments against Iran “were not supported by an analysis of the facts” the committee added, noting that much of the natural gas flared off by Iran – which US officials say could be harnessed instead of nuclear power – was not recoverable for energy use.

Today, Iran has a population of over 65 million. In 2002, earnings from oil and gas made up more than 70 per cent of total government revenues, while taxes made up 20 per cent. The country produces some 4 mmb/d of oil (down a third from its 1974 level) of which almost half is now consumed domestically. Years of political isolation, recurring war and US sanctions have deprived the oil sector of needed investment. Iran’s share of total world oil trade peaked at 17.2 per cent in 1972, then declined to 2.6 per cent in 1980, and is now around 5 per cent. The government hopes that foreign finance and technology will help raise Iran’s output to 5.6 million barrels per day by 2010 and 7.3 million barrels per day by 2020.

Comparison of Iran’s oil and gas production, late 1970s and early 2000s

Iranian expert, Christopher de Bellaigue, outlined the limitations of Iran’s oil and gas reserves in plugging its energy gap, in a past article in Foreign Policy journal:

Iran is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves. But its energy needs are rising faster than its ability to meet them. Driven by a young population and high oil revenues, Iran’s power consumption is growing by around 7 percent annually, and its capacity must nearly triple over the next 15 years to meet projected demand.

Where will the electricity come from? Not from the oil sector. It is retarded by US sanctions, as well as inefficiency, corruption, and Iran’s institutionalized distrust of Western investors. Since 1995, when the sector was opened to a handful of foreign companies, Iran has added 600,000 barrels per day to its crude production, enough to offset depletion in aging fields, but not enough to boost output, which has stagnated at around 3.7 million barrels per day since the late 1990s. Almost 40 percent of Iran’s crude oil is consumed locally. If this figure were to rise, oil revenues would fall, spelling the end of the strong economic growth the country has enjoyed since 1999. Plugging the gap with natural gas is not possible—yet. Iran’s gigantic gas reserves are only just being tapped, so Iran remains a net importer.

The report also noted that the committee staff “as a courtesy” invited the US intelligence community to provide input on the report. But its authors did not interview intelligence officials. In other words, the report was largely insulated from any input or analysis by intelligence community professionals during its actual drafting.

If the Intelligence Committee had talked with IC analysts they doubtlessly would have said that their report uses information contained in the International Atomic Energy Agency reports to come to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of the IAEA.

That avoidance of consultation with the intelligence community may well have been deliberate, as the intelligence community is uncertain about what it actually knows about Iran. When the committee report cites analysis done by the director of National Intelligence or the State Department, one sees language such as, “Iran likely has an offensive-chemical-weapons research-and-development capability,” or “Iran probably has an offensive-biological-weapons program.” This is hardly the “slam dunk” evidence that those wishing to attack Iran want to read.

Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “Analysts were burned pretty badly during the run-up to the war in Iraq. I’m not surprised that some in the intelligence community are a bit gun-shy about appearing to be warmongering.”

That is an extraordinarily disingenuous, not to mention ironic statement to make. It is ironic that this is, once again, being spun as a case of the intelligence analysts being too conservative in their work for fear of making the same alleged “mistakes.”
This is the new post-Iraq party line; i.e. is that it was the intelligence analysts who made mistakes, as opposed to policymakers in the White House who pressured intelligence analysts to come up with conclusions to support their already established policies – that they supposedly made in the case of Iraq.

Gary Sick, a former National Security Council staff member in the Jimmy Carter administration and director of the Gulf/2000 project at Columbia University, circulated a memo last week noting problems with the accuracy of the committee report. He wrote:

If you are going to take on the entire US intelligence community, it is a very good idea to at least get your basic facts straight. On a very quick reading, I found a statement on page 9 claiming that the 164 centrifuges at the Iranian Natanz site are “currently enriching uranium to weapons grade”. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true – and a lot of evidence that the tiny bit of enriched uranium produced at this site was reactor-grade (c 2.5% vs weapons grade c 95%). It may be true that Fleitz, and perhaps many in the neo-con community, suspect that weapons-grade enrichment is either covertly under way or is planned, but their suspicions should not be allowed to substitute for facts…
 
The author of this report did not have the time or inclination to talk to any of the intelligence organizations that he was indicting. If he had, he might at least have caught some of the embarrassing bloopers in the text. Yet the report was rushed to public release in order to coincide with Iran’s reply to the Europeans (for maximum publicity impact), without even waiting for it to be reviewed by the full committee.

The irony, therefore, is stunning when Representative Peter Hoekstra, who heads the Senate Committee, explained the rush by commenting that “we want to avoid another ‘slam dunk’”. The famous “slam dunk” judgment on Iraq’s WMD was, of course, the result of selective reading of available intelligence (which some call cherry-picking), plus a willingness by some to subordinate the (often prosaic) facts to (sensational) ideological conviction.

That is exactly what has happened in this report. It is a sloppy attempt to lay the ground for another slam-dunk judgment and a potential rush to war. It deserves to be recognized for what it is.

Related posts:

1. Obsession with Nuclear Deterrent Doesn’t Add Up
2. Will arming the Gulf solve the Iranian problem?
3. Should We Engage Iran Out of the NPT?
4. Winning Turkey’s Support on Iran
5. Russia: whose strategic partner?