The NIE was a political sensation, seized on by Democrats and Iraq war critics as another case in which the Bush Administration had supposedly politicized intelligence. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the NIE a "declaration of victory," and it derailed any hopes for the Bush Administration to garner international support for tougher sanctions on Iran.
Yet some of us noted at the time that the NIE added, in a crucial footnote, that by "nuclear weapons program" it meant "weapon design and weaponization work and . . . uranium enrichment-related work," rather than Iran's "declared" nuclear facilities. The NIE's main authors—including former intelligence official Tom Fingar and other internal critics of Bush Administration policies—downplayed this critical detail. Never mind that it was precisely Iran's "declared" nuclear facilities that constituted the core element of any nuclear-weapons program.
To me it was astounding that the press (led by the intelligence people responsible for the NIE--are reporters unable to read and comprehend on their own?) spun the tale that Iran wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons when just reading the actual NIE summary would make it clear that Iran was pushing forward on paths that lead to nuclear missiles.
Stripped of all that nuanced thinking we were subjected to, it is clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons.
