No A-Bomb for Iran After All

An interesting twist, for sure, that will cause the right wing military-industrial commentariat to go ballistic: it turns out Iran isn't building nuclear weapons after all.

That's the conclusion of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, a document compiled jointly by our leading intelligence agencies.

What this tells us is that after six years of letting politicians--especially Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld--dictate what the intelligence agencies would find, we're now finally in an era when the President, having had most of his political cronies run out of town, is allowing the intelligence agencies to do their work.

Just imagine if this is how it had gone in the run-up to the Iraq war--we would have saved thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and a trillion dollars.

Now, a prediction (an easy one, at that): look for a slew of op-ed pieces from the right wing attacking this NIE, cherry-picking data just like they did on Iraq, and continuing their sword-rattling for a preemptive strike against Iran.

P.S.--Don't get us wrong: we think Iran is still up to some serious mischief, both in Iraq, and perhaps more malevolently, in Lebanon.

Seriously, though--we need to engage Iran, not demonize it. For example, it's hard to see how the U.S. can justify intervening in Iraq for strategic reasons, but then denounce Iran for having an interest in what's going on along it's border. Iraq fought a long, costly and deadly war against Iran not that long ago, and the Iranians have some pretty good reasons to dislike Iraqi Sunni muslims. That doesn't necessarily justify what they're doing, but it does suggest getting a dialogue going.