About-turn on Iran

It is not just the ways of God that are mysterious. William Cowper, the 18th century British poet, would have been equally mystified by the ways of the US government, whose intelligence agencies now say that far from actively building an atom bomb, Iran stopped doing so way back in 2003 (which, let it be noted, was before Mr Ahmedinejad became president).

To which the US might reply, along with the apostle John, "You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand." In the case of Iraq, President George W Bush leaned on his intelligence agencies to say that Iraq had atom bombs and other "weapons of mass destruction"), and so got into a most frightful hole.

This time, though the intelligence agencies have reversed their position of 2005, President Bush seems inclined to keep up the pressure on Iran regardless. But war with Iran must now be ruled out, there is no way that the US Congress will authorise one.

For the moment, then, Iran is safe, whether or not it is close to getting a bomb. The next steps in the process will consist of "intense diplomatic pressure", whatever that means in the context of Iran, which, in the past, has faced pressure at levels that would be hard to beat now.

It is instructive to read what the US director of national intelligence, who puts out the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), actually says. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt ... was ... primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."

This assessment is prefaced by a careful explanation of the terms used. This is the time tested and wholly wonderful CYA (Cover Your A**e) tactic. The Estimate says, "We use phrases such as we judge, we assess, and we estimate "" and probabilistic terms such as probably and likely "" to convey analytical assessments and judgments. Such statements are not facts, proof, or knowledge." In short, this is what we think; now it is up to you guys to take it or leave it.

CYA is important for the CIA, which has an impressive list of blunders, from the 1946 report that the USSR was at least 10 years from building a bomb, to the failure to predict the Korean War, to the Bay of Pigs, and its 1970s assessment that "East Germany was one of the top ten economies in the world". The CIA also had no clue about the Israeli bomb, or for that matter the Indian one.

Indeed, the US government as a whole has consistently misread Iran, ignoring olive branches when they were held out (as was done early in the Bush presidency), and apparently clueless about Iran's desire to win friends outside of its hostile neighbourhood.

The ultimate irony is the fact that, in aligning Iraqi politics along religious and ethnic lines, the US has given Iran a massive helping hand in extending its influence within Iraq, which happens to have a Shia majority. It is hard to imagine how a country with the best intelligence resources and sophisticated analysts can get policy so consistently wrong.

One explanation could be that the voice of the experts gets drowned in government policy debates. Whatever the case, it should be a matter of relief that the intelligence agencies have had the courage to speak out this time. The contrast with assessments of Iraq before the war marks perhaps the decline of the Bush presidency as it enters its final year.