Knock, Knock Folks - Iran Is Lying

Okay. Everyone take a deep breath, take a step back from the latest revelation from the NIE that Iran has NOT moved forward with nuclear weapon development since the 2003 freeze...and now, let's face the facts. Iran is lying. They always lie.

Democratic Senators and Congressmen are running around Washington D.C. all smiley-faced saying "we told you!" Yet, those same politicians must admit to themselves, that they are putting their trust in one, maybe two Iranian informants who verfied Iran is not in the nuke game.

I'm not going to go through it all as it is very detailed but I implore you to read the whole story here at Newsmax.

But I will go out on a limb here. The NIE's account of the current state of affairs in Iran will be withdrawn within 30 days.

Iran is pulling the wool over the NIE's eyes and it is pretty clear from the Newsmax article that this latest revelation is based on some pretty flimsy intel.
My point is this. When it comes down to brass tacks, trust your gut. Would Iran lie to the world about gaining nuclear capabilities? If you answered "No" to that, then you are reading the wrong blog and perhaps have just been born.

There's no wool over my eyes. This is farce. And just between you and me...(again, a gut feeling)...the U.S. Intelligence community knows it is. After all, you heard of Reverse Psychology, yes? :wink:

Some excerpts from the Newsmax article follows:

U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.
Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.
Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.

My former colleague from the Washington Times, Bill Gertz, suggests in today’s print edition of the paper that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Alireza Asgari, who defected while in Turkey in February, was the human source whose information led to the NIE”s conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But intelligence sources in Europe told Newsmax in late September that Asgari’s debriefings on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs were “so dramatic” that they caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister to speak out publicly about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Sarkozy stunned his countrymen when he told an annual conference of French ambassadors on Aug. 27, 2007, that Iran faced a stark choice between shutting down its nuclear program, or tougher international sanctions and ultimately, war.
“This approach is the only one that allows us to escape from a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran,” Sarkozy said.

“We want to know why we should believe this,” one congressional Republican told Newsmax. “This is such a departure from the past and there are so many unanswered questions.”

UPDATE:

Israel agrees with me. I don't know about you, but I'll trust Israel's intelligence network any day of the week.

This is from DEBKA:

Israel publicly challenges US intelligence report that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is on hold
December 4, 2007, 11:32 AM (GMT+02:00)

Defense minister Ehud Barak argued that Iran had in fact restarted its program.
“It’s apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then, it has apparently continued that program,” Barak told Israel army radio. “We cannot afford to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the globe, even if it is from our greatest friend,” said the defense minister.
Israel’s foreign missions were instructed to step up the international campaign for tough sanctions against Iran to repair the impression created by the US intelligence reassessment that Iran is off the hook on its military nuclear program