The Key Question about the NIE's Key Judgment By Herbert E. Meyer

In the Intelligence business, you get paid for just one thing: to be right.

So here's the key question about the Key Judgment of the National Intelligence Council's new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities: Is this judgment supported by the evidence?

The judgment that's stirring up all the controversy -- and it's a real shocker -- comes in the very first sentence: We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.  The judgment is astonishing for two reasons.  First, it flies in the face of virtually everything we know - or thought we knew -- about the Iranian regime, its capabilities and its intentions.  Second, If the new Key Judgment is correct it means that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program fully two years before publication of the National Intelligence Council's 2005 Estimate on this same subject, which concluded "with high confidence" that Iran "currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons."

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