Iran’s Khomeinists are winning

Walid Phares writing at Family Security Matters.org says that this NIE is reveals "the systemic crisis" of the politicized NIE.

The NIE failed to see and explain that the 2003 decision was a change of strategy not a halt to a strategy; for the Ahmadinejad plan was to ensnare the US in Iraq so that it couldn’t destroy the process of Iran’s shifting the balance of power in its crucial early stages. Tragically, what was missed in Washington is that Tehran was building the missiles before completing the fissile. While attention was focused on the uranium enrichment process, the Pasdaran were setting up the delivery system, i.e., the actual threat system.

The bomb part of the Iranian nuclear strategy was the last stage, while the missiles were the most urgent to acquire first. Strategically it makes sense, because if the Iranians had produced a weapon, it could have been taken out via airpower without the risk of a second strike (since the delivery system would have been absent). But if the missiles were obtained before, the world couldn’t intervene preemptively against them. And when the bombs were ready (through assembly or purchase) they would be locked on the rockets. At that particular time, unilateral strikes against the Iranian weapons would run the risk of Iranian missile counter attacks against the free world.

Tehran played it very wisely and outmaneuvered its enemies in the West; it got away with the missiles, which are now advanced and deployed. Hence all that the Khomeinists need to achieve by the end of 2007, as their delivery systems are developed, is a conclusion in Washington that will deter it from acting against the nukes, the fusion centers, the launching ramps and other types of deployment. The NIE report has paved the way for that decision.

By cleverly convincing the American intelligence community and the public that Tehran had already abandoned the whole nuclear strategy in 2003, Iran has delegitimized America’s ability to act against the missiles. Hence the field is wide open for the secret nuclear program to accelerate, as the delivery system is being completed. By the time America discovers it has been duped, the nukes will be sitting on top of the missiles. All the Jihadi strategic planners had to do was to use America’s political systems against itself. Hence, because the NIE analysts failed to provide the global context of the Iranian strategy and have been pressing for a political agenda over national security priorities, Iran’s Khomeinists are winning, regardless of who will occupy the White House in January 2008.