Russ McBee

For the last couple of years, the neocons and their puppets have been shouting about the dangers allegedly posed by Iran and its oh-so-scary nuclear program. Just two months ago, President Bush said this about the threat that Iran's nuclear program represented:

Q But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?

THE PRESIDENT: I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have [sic] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

They've been beating the war drums so loudly and persistently for the last year or two, it's sounded like 2002 all over again. As with the warnings about "mushroom clouds" being rained on us by Saddam Hussein, it turns out the whole Iranian nuclear weapon thing was a charade.

The National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday revealed what appears to be a bombshell: Iran halted its nuclear weapons research in 2003 and hasn't taken any steps in the last four years to revive it (Bush knew at least some parts of this intelligence when he made the "World War III" remark back in October). Bush held a press conference today in a vain attempt to salvage his credibility on the issue, resulting in what Dan Froomkin called "neck-snapping spin even by Bush standards."

The whole thing smells a little fishy to me.

Keep in mind that the NIE was not leaked to the press, nor does it represent some kind of rebellion by the intelligence community; the document was deliberately declassified and published by the White House. Here's a direct link to the NIE on the website of the Director of National Intelligence. As of this writing, that link is sitting on the front page of the DNI site.

If it were simply a matter of the NIE including inconvenient facts which got in the way of a pre-ordained outcome (as with the run-up to the Iraq invasion), the NIE would have simply remained classified and would never have seen the light of day. Given the history of the Bush White House, it is beyond incredible to suggest that they would have deliberately declassified an NIE which contradicted their foregone conclusions (especially ones they've been trumpeting so loudly on the Sunday talk shows), unless there were a compelling reason to do so.

So what could that compelling reason be?

Maybe Bush and Cheney realized that their hysteria regarding Iranian nukes was simply wrong and was based on bad assumptions; if that were the case, though, I think they would have simply ratcheted down the rhetoric and let the issue slowly dissipate over time (exactly like Bush did with his promises to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"). Instead, they released a document which completely and stunningly deflated their chest-thumping on the issue. That kind of mea culpa simply isn't the Bush/Cheney style.

Here's where I don my tinfoil hat for a minute:

Maybe the NIE was released as part of a deal with Iran. Maybe the Iranians agreed to help the US stabilize Iraq in exchange for an unmistakable statement from the White House that their noise about Iranian nuclear weapons was flatly false.

The release of the NIE certainly made that unmistakable statement, loud and clear.

It is at least conceivable that the White House and the neocons have finally realized two crucial things:

1) Iran has a vested interest in stabilizing Iraq; they don't want or need a repeat of the disastrous Iran/Iraq War of the 1980's. Those two next-door neighbors are the only majority Shi'ite countries in the world, and Iran would be wise to foster stability inside the borders of its Shi'ite neighbor. Call them what you will, but the Iranians are not fools.

2) The Iranians are very, very patient. No matter how long we stay in Iraq, whether it be years, decades, or centuries, the Iranians will always be there next door, waiting for us to leave. The Persians have been there for three thousand years, and they're not going anywhere. It would be best to take advantage of that long-term presence rather than continue a vain attempt to simply wish the country would disappear.

(It would be much smarter of the White House to enlist the Iranians in a regional stability arrangement rather than ignore them, or worse, attack them and antagonize the entire region against us even more than it already is. However, I'm not including any presumptions of smarts on the part of the White House in this hypothesis, for obvious reasons.)

I find it easy to believe that the Iranians and the White House have been negotiating some kind of quid pro quo -- a face-saving way for Iran to assist in the stabilization of Iraq in exchange for a face-saving way for the Bush Administration to begin withdrawing American troops.

With the White House admission that it has been completely full of it on the Iran nuke issue, Iran now has a way to maintain its dignity while coming to the aid of its neighbor (and, by extension, becoming a hero in the region as the country which pushed the Americans out of Iraq). By coming to Bush's aid, the Iranians also provide the White House with a means of extricating itself from the Iraq quagmire. It's a win-win scenario for both sides -- Bush would be able to leave office during a draw-down of tensions in the region, and Iran would avoid being bombed to Kingdom Come.

This may all be wild-eyed speculation on my part, but I think this op-ed in today's Washington Post by the flaming neocon Robert Kagan supports my view. First of all, the idea of a neocon writing an op-ed entitled "Time to Talk to Iran" is pretty jarring in itself. Second, Kagan says this:

The embarrassment of the NIE will be fleeting. Strategic realities are more durable. America remains powerful in the world and in the Middle East. The success of the surge policy in Iraq means that the United States may be establishing a sustainable position in the region -- a far cry from a year ago, when it seemed about to be driven out. If Iraq is on the road to recovery, this shifts the balance against Iran, which was already isolated.

That's neocon speak for "we'll declare victory, go home, and leave Iran to clean up our mess."

The entire Kagan piece is filled with exhortations to negotiate with Iran on a raft of issues, but the central, surprising core of the article is merely the fact that a prominent neocon is advocating any approach to Iran other than war. That is a sea change from the neocon rhetoric of the last ten years.

Maybe Kagan's article supports my hypothesis, or maybe I'm misreading the whole thing. Maybe his op-ed piece is a trial balloon, meant to gauge response among rank-and-file conservatives to the second half of Bush's quid pro quo with Iran. If Kagan's piece is received favorably, the White House could then begin the process of integrating Iran into concrete plans for Iraq's future stability.

Frankly, I'm having a hard time imagining any other reason why this NIE was released.