News photos contributed to Iran reassessment

[sabra]

Source: USA Today

WASHINGTON — For all of the effort spent trying to determine the scope of Iran's nuclear weapons program, it was a media visit to Iran that helped the intelligence community reconsider its assessment of the program, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.

Photographs taken during the media visit this year weren't decisive in determining when Iran stopped its nuclear program, said an officer who helped prepare a National Intelligence Estimate released Monday.

But the photos from Iran's Natanz nuclear facility were reviewed by intelligence analysts who concluded Iran continues to face "significant technical problems" in using the facility to enrich uranium, the officer said.

Four intelligence officials spoke at a briefing on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of intelligence collection, said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

...


In revising their estimate, intelligence officers said they were mindful of "lessons learned" from a 2002 report that overstated the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-12-03-iraninside_N.htm

[bif]

1. Unlike the doctored photos Powell shamelessly presented to the UN

[leveymg]

2. Of course their program has problems - they're still using the crappy AQ Khan P-1/P-2 centrifuge

Slowest and most inefficicient way in the world to make HEU. Why do you think the CIA sat back all those years while Khan peddled his second-hand junk to Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea?

Why else do you think Bush-Cheney "outed" the CIA-Counter Proliferation Division? As things were going, it was going to be many years before anybody had made enough weapons grade materials using Khan's equipment. Who could wait that long? They had a GWOT against the "Axis of Evil" to carry out!