NIE in the sky? 

NIE in the sky? - - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper: “There are several reasons for concern about NIE’s about-face on Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.

The assessment appears to have been triggered primarily by recent humint input. Worrisome is the weight given to what may well be a counter-intelligence effort by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The humint relied upon is a claim by senior IRGC official Ali Rez Asgari who defected during a February trip to Turkey. Mr. Asgari told a foreign intelligence agency all activity on Iran’s nuclear weapons program stopped four years ago. His claim purportedly was supported by intercepted communications among Iranian officials.”

Against this backdrop of declared Iranian intentions to destroy us, of past questionable U.S. intelligence assessments, of the timing of Mr. Asgari’s defection, of the inexperience and motivations of the analysts, can we afford to put the world at risk by blindly accepting it? Previously, the U.S. was able to bounce back following flawed intelligence assessments. But that will not be the case if we are wrong about Iran.
Therefore, the only assessment we can afford to accept is one obtained via verifiable inspection of a nuclear weapons development program Tehran keeps hidden deep beneath the Earth’s surface, while claiming peaceful intent.