U.S. Lacking Intelligence On Iran

A report from the House Intelligence Committee says that the U.S. is lacking reliable intelligence on Iran. Most notable of which is there development of nuclear weapons. The report therefore also says that more must be spent on spying on Iran. The house is also saying that there is a great deal we do not know about Iran, policymaker will need best possible quality intelligence to prepare for any new round of negotiations. The report does not stop at Iran's nuclear program, it also mentions chemical and biological programs.



My first thought on reading this was that the U.S. has not had any sort of organized intelligence in Iran since about the late 1980 or so. With no formal relations, and thus no embassy, means no organized intelligence operatives. So of course the intelligence is lacking on Iran! Which brings up the next point. What will be done improve the intelligence on Iran? Normalized relations? Perhaps but I don't really think so. Any improved intelligence in my opinion will go through another country. Perhaps a U.S. intelligence operative with the cover of being an embassy worker for another country. Just my opinion.

Related News Links:
jta.org
www.foreignaffairs.org
www.guardian.co.uk

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
NEWS: U.S. Panel Critical of Intelligence About Iran
CIA Director Porter Goss: Iran Has Nukes
Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran

First thing that makes me think is that we won't be dropping bombs in Iran any time soon.

Originally posted by infinite8
First thing that makes me think is that we won't be dropping bombs in Iran any time soon.

Infinite,
That is defently a good thought. No good person wants to see any one get killed by way of an exsplosion. Although on the flip side of the coin, with out good intelligence it makes the possibilty greater that something will get blown up in the US because the intelligence was not in place to find out about it.

Lack of intelligence didn't stop us from bombing Iraq!
We don't need no stinking intelligence, just bomb everything and let God sortem out. [sarcasm]

I don't think lack of intelligence will stop this current band of chicken hawks from
following what they see as God's will.

It's a brave new world!

We DO have reliable intelligence in Iran, we just need more.

Here is more information about this though, unclassified only:

intelligence.house.gov...

Originally posted by LAES YVAN
We DO have reliable intelligence in Iran, we just need more.

Here is more information about this though, unclassified only:

intelligence.house.gov...

Laes,
That is a good link you posted, thank you
I did not take the time to go through the hole thing, but the first 4 pages or so did show plenty. I would shugest any one reading this at least look at the first 4 pages of the link above.

The cited report came from the office of Representative Hoekstra, the same Hoekstra involved in the subject of this thread here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Hoekstra seems to be being fed info (ala Judith Miller and Chalabi and the New York Times, which led to the White House saying, see, we need to go to war in Iraq )

Here is a plausable source

The Hoekstra-issued draft bears the fingerprints of one Frederick Fleitz - the principal drafter, according to press reports. Fleitz did his apprenticeship on politicization under John Bolton when the latter was Under Secretary of State, and became his principal aide and chief enforcer while on loan from the CIA. In this light, his behavior in trying to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy is even more inexcusable. CIA analysts, particularly those on detail to policy departments, have no business playing the enforcer of policy judgments; they have no business conjuring up "intelligence around the policy."

www.truthout.org...

News reporters were used to help lead the country to a war in Iraq. Now that they're "discredited", why not use an elected official?

Be suspicious, be very suspicious.

Originally posted by desert

News reporters were used to help lead the country to a war in Iraq. Now that they're "discredited", why not use an elected official?

Be suspicious, be very suspicious.

Desert,
So are you saying that we do have adaquat intelligence on Iran right now? Or that we just dont need good intelligence?

Back in the late 1970's when the US was in Iran listening to the USSR, we couldn't even anticipate the hostage crisis. We were IN the country and got our butts whipped! If, with the billions and billions that we spend on all our intelligence services, we cannot get it right, then who can?
I think we have information. It's just how do we interpret that information. Do we "fix" it around a policy, as in Iraq?

If someone is ready for a fight, I could try to reason with that person; but if they choose to ignore my advice and fight anyway, there's not much else I could do. Whether there is good intelligence, bad intelligence, or no intelligence, some people in Washington will want to fight anyway.

From the same source I quoted above

But Iran Doesn't Need Electricity

The authors include this familiar canard: "Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for electricity production appears doubtful in light of its large oil and natural gas reserves." But back in 1976 - with Gerald Ford president, Dick Cheney his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense, and Henry Kissinger national security adviser - the Ford administration bought the Shah's argument that Iran needed a nuclear program to meet its future energy requirements.

They persuaded the hesitant president to offer Iran a deal that would have meant at least $6.4 billion for US corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric, had not the Shah been unceremoniously ousted three years later. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuels cycle - essentially the same capability that the US, Israel, and other countries now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire. Cheney must have forgotten all this, when he noted early last year that the Iranians are "already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."

OK, so maybe there's no talk of going to war, but even for negotiations purpose hard information can give way still to ideology.

Desert
Ok I see, you are saying that we just need better interpetation of the intilligence that there is, and for leaders to listen to the experts in the field.
The latter will probably rarely happen.

Exactly, RedG, and I would venture further to say that there is excellent interpretation/analysis, but, in the end, it is up to the leaders to accept or reject the analysis. That is where ideology comes in.

Also, if leaders, or a population in general, do not understand the cultural context from which this intelligence comes, we become less capable of correct action.

Let's say a bunch of neighbors observe a neighbor digging a 6ft trench in his backyard. Is he going to put in a vegetable garden, bury his wife, install a pond, etc. Someone who had an angry run in with this neighbor might believe this neighbor killed his wife or is even going to kill him, while another neighbor swears he saw the man buying materials to build a pond. I know this is a simplistic example, but leaders (like VP Cheney), who say that even a one percent chance of the man killing someone should be taken seriously, could take unnecessary/drastic action against that neighbor.

Oh, I forgot to add, that this is a good thread, as I wonder if the subject will come up in any future news/discussion shows. Interesting to see if/when it gets any more play elsewhere.

Oh oh, I had forgotten about this twist--Plame, Iran, Nuclear
www.truthout.org...
Curiouser and curiouser. Or maybe just more incompetence.

[edit on 27-8-2006 by desert]

[edit on 27-8-2006 by desert]

Desert,
Thanks for the link. I did look over just did not try to soak it all up. I do hope you are right in opinions. I would like to think the intelligence on Iran is as good as needed. Not like I really have any way of knowing though.

I know what you mean.
I was told years ago to read James Bamford for a good look at what we're not supposed to see. Thought I'ld pass along this recommendation.

Originally posted by LAES YVAN
We DO have reliable intelligence in Iran, we just need more.

Here is more information about this though, unclassified only:

intelligence.house.gov...

actually, that is a very good source to show that we have NO true intelligence on Iran.

If you read in the very first paragraph: it says that the information used for this report is OPEN SOURCE, meaning that they looked it up in the CIA atlas...

then you see statements like

likely to have

that means that they have no true clue...

and that info absence is largely due to the Plame affair, since Iran info was her ballgame...
when she was outed, it was time to round up the iranian sources that had her as a contact, and that seems to be all of them, according to the report posted earlier.

So in essence, a blab by the administration has left us almost clueless to perhaps our greatest threat...

lets look at what this DOES though...

it forces us to rely upon allys information networks...
namely the Mossad...

and we all know what Israel would like to see done to Iran, so I really hope that information is tempered as such, but alas, I fear that Cheney will ride again...

Hmm... "US lacks intelligence..." surely not?

Well, if having a US embassy in the country means the US can't spy on you, then what incentives do the Iranians have for normalising relations? They did, after all, call the US Embassy "the nest of spies" ever since the CIA overthrew Mossadegh, installed the Shah, and equipped and trained one of the most vicious secret police forces in the world.

As for the Select Committee report... lol. Love that American Eagle at the masthead. And as soon as I got to the first quotation from Ahmedinejad, I thought, hello, it's that old misquote about wiping Israel off the map. He never said that. The speech was mistranslated by the Israeli think-tank MEMRI, who specialise in this kind of disinfo.

He actually said that he wanted regime change in Israel. If wanting regime change is a crime, then we can lock Bush and his cabinet up immediately.

Yup, if I want something translated from Arabic, I'll go straight to an Israeli Zionist think tank. OF COURSE they'll produce something unbiased

And then we get "Iran likely has an offensive chemical weapons... capability" and "Iran probably has an offensive biological weapons program." Probably. Likely. It's not even as much of a "slam dunk" as the Iraqi weapons program. "We know where they are... to the north, south, east, and somewhere to the west of Baghdad... and don't forget the biologically engineered attack badgers that Saddam has developed to spread panic within the American heartland."

I have a question: IF the US really did suffer from a critical shortfall in intelligence on Iran and its inner workings..........don't you think that that very fact would be so sensitive as to render it classified? If we had weaknesses in our intelligence gathering system versus Iran, wouldn't you think that the government would want to protect that fact very strongly?

I see three possible scenarios:

1. This is disinformation, designed to lull the Iranians into a state of "less-preparedness"

2. This is old fashioned politics, designed to garner support for an increase in the US intelligence budget

3. This is another veiled threat against Iran, and the CIA will now watch their reactions and guage any new CI programs the Iranians institute

I think most people don't really grasp or understand the vast numbers of Iranian people who despise their current government, who have many relatives living in the US, and who are willing to provide information to the US and Europe on a regular basis.

Does it not strike any one else as completely inept that the conclussion drawn by the Bush administration is that the CIA is inadequate for not finding intelligence rather than that there is little evidence pointing to their assertions?

It's like saying NASA is inadequate because it has not provided enough evidence to show that intelligent life exists in our Universe.

When the stakes are as high as a proposed pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran for a nuclear program no one but Britain, Israel and the United States seems certain Iran has, then stunted logic such as this needs to be corrected.

No intelligence = no reason to pre-emptively attack.

Subz...
for a preemptive attack to be considered, it would require a statement such from the Iranian president such as "I want to wipe Israel off the map"

Which he didn't actually say, as the translation was a bit of disinformation...

A country has to have presented a threat of such a degree, that there is an imminent attack possible...

Iran hasn't threatened to attack, or threatened war with any nation... including Israel...

so no attack upon Iran can be considered Pre-emptive...
it would catagorically be a profilactic attack, but in truth, would be a (as you stated)
unwarranted attack...

And regarding our Info on Iran...
the lack of CIA intellegence was primarily due to Cheneys, and Bushs offices actions to out Plame (and her iranian contacts)

Actually,

RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL

TEHRAN 14 Dec. (IPS) One of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them "damages only".
"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world", Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at the traditional Friday prayers in Tehran.
Analysts said not only Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s speech was the strongest against Israel, but also this is the first time that a prominent leader of the Islamic Republic openly suggests the use of nuclear weapon against the Jewish State. iran-press-service.com

and

As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.

His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at government
rallies. english.aljazeera.net

Semper


[edit on 15-9-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

There are different kinds of intelligence. The intelligence obtained from highly classified sources will be shown to very few people. However, if highly classified intelligence contradicts public perceptions, it can be hard for leaders to act on that intelligence. Furthermore, the intelligence agencies are likely to put out disinformaiton. So, there is no way to really know what they actually know or believe. Even so, the intelligence agencies themselves can be misinterpreting information.

US intelligence has lots of good satellite images of Iran. They also can listen in to conversations, and they had apparently broken Iranian codes. It may be possible that the US can bug the conversations between top Iranian leaders. However, even if the US had complete surveillance on every Iranian leader, the US still has to judge leader's intentions. This can be complicated, and furthermore the US has to gauge cultural reactions.