A 2009 U.S. congressional research paper says U.S. intelligence believes Iran ended "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work" in 2003.[18] The intelligence consensus was affirmed by leaders of the U.S. intelligence community.[citation needed] Some advisors within the Obama administration reaffirmed the intelligence conclusions,[184] while other "top advisers" in the Obama administration "say they no longer believe" the key finding of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate".[185] Thomas Fingar, former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council until December 2008, said that the original 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran "became contentious, in part, because the White House instructed the Intelligence Community to release an unclassified version of the report's key judgments but declined to take responsibility for ordering its release."[186] Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in January 2010 that there is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to build a nuclear weapon and that the key findings of a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate are all still correct.[187] On 20 July 2011, Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and House Intelligence Committee staff member, took issue with a February 2011 revision of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "America's Intelligence Denial on Iran." In the op-ed, Fleitz claimed the new estimate had serious problems and underplayed the threat from Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons program much as the 2007 version did. However, Fleitz stated that he was not permitted by CIA censors to discuss his specific concerns about the estimate. Fleitz also claimed the estimate had a four-member outside review board that he viewed as biased since three of the reviewers held the same ideological and political views and two of them were from the same Washington DC think tank. He noted that the CIA prevented him from releasing the names of the outside reviewers of the 2011 Iran estimate. Several high U.S. military and intelligence officials have stated that the effects of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would not be preventive. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in December 2011, and Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said in February 2012 that an Israeli attack would only delay Iran's program by one or two years. General Michael V. Hayden, former CIA Director, said in January 2012 that Israel was not able to inflict significant damage on Iran's nuclear sites. He said, "They only have the ability to make this worse."[188] In February 2012, Admiral William J. Fallon, who retired in 2008 as head of U.S. Central Command, said, "No one that I'm aware of thinks that there's any real positive outcome of a military strike or some kind of conflict." He advocated negotiating with Iran and deterring Iran from aggressive actions and said, "Let's not precipitate something."[189][190] General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in August 2012 that a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran would delay but not destroy Iran's nuclear program and that he did not wish to be "complicit" in such an attack. He also stated that sanctions were having an effect and should be given time to work, and that a premature attack might damage the 'international coalition' against Iran.[191] Former Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Robert Gates stated in October 2012 that sanctions were beginning to have an effect and that "the results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world."[192] In 2011, the senior officers of all of the major American intelligence agencies stated that there was no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any attempt to produce nuclear weapons since 2003.[14] In January 2012, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, but was not attempting to produce nuclear weapons.[193] In 2012, sixteen United States intelligence agencies, including the CIA, reported that Iran was pursuing research that could enable it to produce nuclear weapons, but was not attempting to do so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction Image via [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

• published: 03 Nov 2013
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