Posted on: Friday, March 11, 2005

EDITORIAL
Doubt cast on claims about Iran weapons

The run-up to the war in Iraq was replete, you'll recall, with the Bush administration's expressions of certainty that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program.

Those assessments, we now know, were wrong. We also know, because of a report last summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee, that those prewar expressions of certainty weren't supported by the intelligence available at the time.

In the end, we invaded Iraq, only to find no weapons.

Now there's a feeling of déjà vu as the Bush administration issues increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons. This time, our new CIA director, Porter Goss, told Congress that Iran continues "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

The administration flatly dismisses Iran's insistence that its nuclear programs are for civilian energy production, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency inability to find any evidence of a weapons program in Iran.

Perhaps the administration will turn out to be right this time. But a bipartisan commission due to report to President Bush this month has concluded, according to a report in The New York Times, that American intelligence on Iran is inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs.

The nine-member bipartisan presidential panel, led by Laurence Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles Robb, a former governor and senator from Virginia, had unrestricted access to the most senior people and the most sensitive documents of the intelligence agencies.

The panel also is expected to be sharply critical of American intelligence on North Korea, but it's more worried about Iran.

One person familiar with the work of the panel, The Times reported, characterized American intelligence on Iran as "scandalous," given the importance and relative openness of the country.

At the very least, this report should constrain the administration to less stridency about Iran, and Congress to far more skepticism than it exercised in assessing the case against Iraq.