Too hard on our intel people? You bet! We spend upwards of $70 billion on hardware, software, and the care and feeding of thousands of analysts and this was the best we can do? (Andy: I know I don’t know what I’m talking about but something is still wrong with that picture.)

Haha, nice preemptive strike, Rick! Please don’t take my previous comments personally, as I’m well aware the IC too often likes to cloak ignorance or incompetence in secrecy. It is hardly fair to blame you or anyone who is not familiar with the IC to understand its politics and complexities.

That said, let my try to pull back the curtain a bit to expose some of the underlying issues at hand.

First of all, and I believe I’ve mentioned this before here, even with perfect intelligence, predictions on development programs can never be made with any degree of certainty. Even if we knew everything Iran knows there would still be a significant lack of precision and accuracy in any prediction simply because there are always unforeseeable obstacles in a technically advanced engineering program. When developing new technology (even if it is just “new” to you), accurately predicting how quickly a particular nation’s scientists will be able to master that technology is simply impossible. After all, we don’t even know when our own development programs will be completed. All the intelligence resources on the planet cannot overcome this simple fact.

Remember that intelligence has two basic functions - to inform on capabilities and intent in the present and to make educated predictions on future capability and intent. The IC is outstanding at the former and has a mixed record on the latter. Again, no matter how perfect the data and information one has at present, there is always doubt as to what may happen in the future. The further into the future, the greater the number of unknown variables and therefore the greater the possible error in any prediction.

Secondly, and WRT to the Iran unclassified NIE, we simply don’t have the full context that an entire classified NIE would provide. When the IC “forecasts” something like an Iranian nuclear capability, it is based on a set of assumptions - assumptions that often do not make it into the unclassified versions of intelligence estimates.

Intelligence from leaks are particularly problematic because they often intentionally omit important context, facts and assumptions that would cast the leaked information in a different light. So while leaked information may be factually true in the narrowest, most absolute sense, it’s often misinterpreted because the context, underlying arguments and assumptions are missing. That is why one must always be skeptical of leaked intelligence because the leaker inevitably has an agenda and therefore will only leak information that supports that agenda. It really is akin to quoting a politician out of context to make them appear to say something they did not actually say or intend to say. Of course not all leaked intelligence is biased in that manner, but enough is that one should view leaked intel with cautious skepticism at best.

Finally, I should note that the IC’s estimate is not, as the misleading WAPO headline you link to describes it, ten years away (from 2005, so 2015). The actually estimate says “early to mid” next decade which is really from 2011 to 2015. The IC has been updating the 2005 NIE for the last couple of months and the unclassified version should be published soon. We’ll see if anything has changed. Still, 2011 is not that far off.

Again, when looking at predictive analysis such as “early to mid” decade, the underlying assumptions are a key factor. If Iran began a crash, overt program using its existing infrastructure, it could conceivably have material for a weapon in 2009, but that course of action would be easily detected and would provide ample cause and opportunity to stop it through military action. Therefore it’s likely (though not assuredly) that one of the underlying assumptions in the 2011-2015 estimate is that Iran will not pursue an overt, crash program (which really is unlikely for a number of reasons) but instead reflects the estimate of when Iran could achieve a covert weapon. In other words, the IC is predicting when Iran could achieve a clandestine weapon undetected by the verification measures implemented by the IAEA and not predicting an overt “breakout” capability. We don’t know for certain which assumption the IC is predicting here.

Anyway, those are some things to think about. I do believe there is time yet, though I agree in part with DG El Baradei that Iran has sufficiently mastered enrichment that the genie is effectively (or almost so) out of the bottle. Unless Iran can be stopped from learning more soon by suspending their program - and by soon I’m talking a couple of months - we will have to look at alternatives to preventing Iran from weaponizing.