U.S. Intelligence Agencies Believe Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003

WASHINGTON — Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago in response to international pressure and is "less determined" to develop such weapons than U.S. intelligence analysts had previously thought, according to a national security document the Bush administration released on Monday.

The findings, reflecting the consensus view of 16 separate U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast sharply with the picture sometimes painted by President Bush, who has lumped Iran in with North Korea and Iraq as part of what he once called an "axis of evil" and recently suggested a nuclear Iran could spark "World War III."

And while the administration has publicly stressed the use of diplomacy to urge Tehran to abandon its purported nuclear weapons ambitions, Monday's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) gave fuel to the president's political opponents, who have accused him of saber rattling.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he and his colleagues had requested the latest NIE nearly two years ago, "so that the administration could not rush this Congress and the country to another war based on flawed intelligence," a reference to war in Iraq.

"I hope this administration reads this report carefully and appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy," Reid said in a statement.

White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley countered that the NIE shows "progress" in the use of diplomacy to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He said the findings also confirm, however, that the risk of Iran acquiring such arms remains "a very serious problem."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stressed his country's right to pursue a nuclear energy program and has publicly vowed to resist pressure from the United States and other countries.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran for its insistence on operating a uranium enrichment program at odds with U.N. nonproliferation goals. And the United States recently tightened decades-old economic sanctions against Tehran, urging banks worldwide to follow suit.

Much of the NIE is classified. The office of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, however, posted a non-classified version of key findings on the DNI Web site.

Iran has not given up entirely on the nuclear option, the NIE concludes, noting that Tehran could acquire such weapons, or the materials to build them, from abroad. It isn't likely, though, that Iran could develop the technical capability to produce its own nuclear weapons before 2010 at the earliest, and perhaps not until after 2015, according to the document.

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," the NIE states. "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."

A 2005 NIE had concluded that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons" and that it could produce enough bomb material to build one by the end of this decade. Monday's NIE said that is now considered "very unlikely."

The findings are sharply at odds with the intelligence community's portrayal five years ago of Iraq. Bush based his case for invading Iraq in March 2003 chiefly on intelligence findings that Baghdad had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that Iraq might be trying to reconstitute and earlier effort to build nuclear weapons.

In nearly five years of fighting that has taken the lives of 3,879 U.S. troops, no stockpiles of such weapons of mass destruction have been found, nor has evidence surfaced to suggest that Iraq was making progress toward building nuclear weapons.

"The contrast in judgments is striking, absolutely striking," said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank devoted to containing the spread of nuclear weapons.

"The intelligence community got singed by providing the administration and the Congress with a worst-case estimate five years ago," said Krepon. "The intelligence community wants to be really sure of its judgments this time around."

According to Monday's NIE, the intelligence community believes with "high confidence" that Iranian military entities were working under government direction to try to develop nuclear weapons from the late 1980s until the fall of 2003. At that point, in the face of international pressure, Iran quietly called off its pursuit of those weapons without ever having built one.

The move suggests that Iran might be persuaded to abandon its nuclear weapons aims completely, the NIE concludes, if the United States and its international partners were to offer the right mix of diplomatic carrots and sticks.

"Some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways, might - if perceived by Iran's leaders as credible - prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program," said the NIE.

Convincing Tehran to do that, though, "will be difficult" the report states.

"In our judgment," the NIE states, "only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons - and such a decision is inherently reversible."

There are gaps in the intelligence. The United States has no formal diplomatic relationship with Iran, so there's no American Embassy there, and U.S. insight into the workings of Tehran's political and military systems is often fuzzy at best.

For that reason, the NIE makes clear that there could be parts of Iran's nuclear weapons program that haven't been halted. The Department of Energy and the National Intelligence Council, for instance, concluded that they can say "with only moderate confidence" that the halt includes Iran's entire nuclear weapons program, the NIE states.

Iran continues to operate a uranium enrichment program, for example, that could one day be capable of producing the kind of highly enriched uranium that can fuel a nuclear bomb. Iran also could be operating clandestine sites not known to U.S. intelligence analysts.

On balance, the NIE states, the question of whether Iran becomes a nuclear power has more to do with political will and national intent than with the difficulty of reproducing weapons technology the United States first deployed six decades ago.

"We assess with high confidence," the NIE states, "that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."