Regarding the Push to Iran

February 23 […] A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003.

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For now, U.S. military and intelligence officials say they don't believe Iran's leadership has made the decision to build a bomb.

"I think they are keeping themselves in a position to make that decision," James R. Clapper Jr., director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 16. "But there are certain things they have not yet done and have not done for some time."

  LA Times

February 27 […] The anti-interventionist resistance inside the government has ways of pushing back against the War Party, and we saw that last week in the Los Angeles Times, with the revelation of the long-lost post-2007 National Intelligence Estimate, a previous version of which determined Iran has not decided to pursue a nuclear weapons program.

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By leaking the supposedly “highly classified” NIE to the media, the analysts and officials in the bowels of Langley are pushing back against the drive to drag us into another major conflict in the Middle East.

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The second to last thing President Obama wants is another war, especially one with the kind of economic consequences a military conflict with Iran is likely to have. The very last thing he wants, however, is to preside over a dramatically failing economy as the election season rolls around, while the Republicans rail at his “appeasement” of Tehran and oil prices continue to skyrocket. Never mind that those price hikes can be traced directly back to our provocations directed at Iran: the average American is likely to blame hostile foreigners rather than our own government officials for the uptick. When the political price for not attacking gets higher than the potential price of going to war, the President will cave – as he has most of the time on substantive issues.

The NIE leak gives him less room to maneuver between the contending factions within his administration, and delivers a big blow to the War Party.

  Justin Raimondo

But I think the War Party is strong enough to take it and keep going.