The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) estimated "with high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear program at least temporarily, and with moderate confidence that it had halted it permanently. But both President Bush and UK Foreign Secretary Miliband insisted that the Iranian nuclear program remained a threat. Miliband pointed out that Iran was producing fissile material, but had no reactor which could use that material.

The NIE was completed October 31, before the IAEA report which had pointed out continuing gaps in Iranian reporting of its nuclear program and cooperation with the IAEA and before the row caused by Iran's renewed refusal to cooperate with European negotiators. These may signal that Iran really is intent on building a bomb, or they may just be posturing like that of Saddam Hussein over Iraqi WMD.

The real questions that the NIE report raises are why it was made public, and why the particular conclusions that it contains were included. The 2006 defense budget law, Public Law 109-364 mandated that an NIE report on Iran be produced, but the decision to make the findings public was optional. Director of National Intelligence McConnell had earlier stated that he was not planning to make the report public. However, in the cover letter for the report, Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald Kerr stated:

"The decision to release an unclassified version of the Key Judgments of this NIE was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation's security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran's capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available."

Of course, we don't really know what the "Key Judgements" of the report are, since these have been selected for us. Moreover, given the additional input from the IAEA and the recalcitrance of Iranian negotiators, perhaps the conclusions might have been updated. The claim, with "moderate confidence" that Iran has permanently halted its nuclear weapons program is highly suspect, since it is unlikely that the Iranians themselves know or can know what they will do five or ten years hence, when they have sufficient fissile material to build a bomb, and Mr. Kerr cannot predict who will be leading Iran in ten years or what that person's or groups policies might be. Iran experts cannot even say today if policy is being made by Mr. Ahmadinejad or by the religious leaders. How can anyone know what Iranian plans will be five years hence?

Suppose an Iranian estimate had predicted in 1996 with "moderate" confidence that the United States had "permanently halted" plans to invade Iraq? Would such a prediction have been meaningful? In 1973, Israeli intelligence predicted "with high confidence" that the Egyptians were not planning an attack, but Israeli intelligence was spectacularly wrong. Predictions about the future are inherently uncertain, especially when they are predictions about reversible policy decisions. Such statements can be at best little more than honest hunches, and at worst political spin. Therefore, the reasoning given for public release of the "findings" and of the particular findings that were released, is at best disingenuous.

Conservative commentators (Podhoretz, NY Sun) believe that the report may have been a deliberate attempt by the CIA to sabotage Bush administration policy. That may or may not be the case.

This report, cannot have much more or less credibility than the 2005 estimate, which claimed with equally "high confidence" that Iran was building a bomb. No intelligence service should make dogmatic "high confidence" statements that are reversed in successive reports, and certainly every intelligence service should refrain from even "moderate confidence" statements about the future plans of a foreign country, The United States National Intelligence Service is not likely to have perfected clairvoyance.

While we can't know what Iran will do or is doing with any confidence, we can and must draw some obvious conclusions on the way in which US policy is being conducted. United States policy about the Middle East is increasingly concerned with inter-agency US policy debates and domestic politics, and is less and less related to realities of the Middle East itself. The intelligence services are there to provide and evaluate intelligence, not to influence public policy. The government should be listening to its own agencies and formulating policy accordingly. If it cannot trust its own intelligence services, then it must draw the appropriate conclusions. Instead, we have release of a report that offers one set of conclusions and American and British leaders who are spinning the report to reach opposite conclusions.

From a distance, it looks as though US policy is not being coordinated in any effective way. It is instead being pulled this way and that by different partisan groups, each with their own unrealistic programs and views, which do not trust each other. That is not government or leadership. It is chaos. "In those days there was no king...every man did that which was right in his own eyes.." (Judges- 17:6). How can the United States government expect its Middle East allies - or anyone else - to follow its leadership if nobody knows where it is really leading? Any government is better than total anarchy.

Ami Isseroff