www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091301837.html
More US Deploys Slide Show to Press Case Against Iran By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 14, 2005; The PowerPoint briefing, titled "A History of Concealment and Deception," has been presented to diplomats from more than a dozen countries. Sever al diplomats said the presentation, intended to win allies for increasin g pressure on the Iranian government, dismisses ambiguities in the evide nce about Iran's intentions and omits alternative explanations under deb ate among intelligence analysts. Politics Trivia The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court earns $208,100 a year. Which of th e following government officials earns less per year than the Chief Just ice?
The presenters argue that the evidence leads solidly to a conclusion that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing weapons, according to dipl omats who have attended the briefings and US officials who helped to a ssemble the slide show. But even US intelligence estimates acknowledge that other possibilities are plausible, though unverified. The problem, acknowledged one US official, is that the evidence is not definitive. Briefers "say you can't draw any other conclusion, and of co urse you can draw other conclusions," said the official, who would discu ss the closed-door sessions only on condition of anonymity. The briefings were conducted in Vienna over the past month in advance of a gathering of world leaders this week at the United Nations. President Bush, who is to address the annual General Assembly gathering Wednesday, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, plan to use the meeting to pre ss for agreement to threaten international sanctions against Iran. The president's direct involvement marks an escalation of a two-year effo rt to bring Iran before the UN Security Council, which has the power t o impose sanctions, unless Tehran gives up technology capable of enrichi ng uranium for a bomb. US officials have acknowledged that it has been an uphill campaign, with opposition from key allies who fear a prelude to a military campaign. Several diplomats said the slide show reminded them of the flawed present ation on Iraq's weapons programs made by then-secretary of state Colin L . "I don't think t hey'll lose any support, but it isn't going to win anyone either," said one European diplomat who attended the recent briefing and whose country backs the US position on Iran. Robert G Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and internatio nal security, acknowledged last week that despite European support, the Bush administration has traveled a tough road in persuading others that Iran should face consequences for a nuclear program it built in secret. on the part of many governments who don't seem to place, quite frankly, nonproliferation and Iran, a nu clear-armed Iran, at the top of their priority list," he told a congress ional panel last week. Several influential nations such as India, Russia, China, South Africa an d Brazil share US suspicions about Iran's intentions. But they maintai n profound differences with the Bush administration over how to respond, and are apprehensive about the goals of a US president who has said " all options are on the table," in dealing with Tehran. Three years ago, the White House used the same annual gathering to put bo th Iraq, and the world community on notice. In a toughly-worded speech, delivered six months before the US invasion of Iraq, Bush warned that the United States would deal alone, if necessary, with a dictator bent o n launching nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community no longer believes Iraq was trying to rec onstitute a nuclear program, as the president said. Those and other US intelligence failures have remained fresh in the minds of international decision-makers now being asked to weigh the case of Iran. The Iraq experience has had a "sobering effect" on Iran discussions, said President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a close ally of the Bush admini stration. In an interview, he refused to speculate on whether Iran, whos e program was secretly aided by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, had be en designed for weapons production. But he said he feels confident Iran' s aims are now peaceful and there was no need for Security Council actio n Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is also attending the UN summit, has his own meetings scheduled in New York, and Iranian officia ls said he would use the gathering to mount forceful counterarguments. I ranian diplomats have been in close contact with countries such as Japan , which relies heavily on Iranian oil. The outcome of both sides' efforts will be tested on Sept. Undersecretary of State R Nicholas Burns last night suggested the admini stration may not be able to press for a successful vote and was explorin g other options. He said the administration was working "with lots of ot her governments to devise an international coalition that will call upon Iran to return to the talks," it walked away from this summer with Euro pean negotiators. "There is a consensus that Iran has got to return to t he talks." Iran insists its nuclear efforts are aimed at producing nuclear energy, n ot bombs. The Bush administration contends that the energy program, buil t in secret and exposed in 2002, is just a cover. "They cannot be allowe d to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear progr am, which is what they're trying to do," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier this month. A recent US intelligence estimate found that Iran, mostly through its e nergy program, is acquiring and mastering technologies that could also b e used for bomb-making. But there is no proof that such diversion has oc curred, the estimate said, and the intelligence community is uncertain a s to whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to go forward wi th a nuclear weapons program. The estimate judged Iran to be as much as a decade away from being able t o manufacture the fissile material necessary for a nuclear explosion. A report issued last week by the International Institute for Security Stud ies, a London-based research group, found Iran was 10 to 15 years from t he technical know-how to build a bomb. Both reports are based in large part on the findings of UN nuclear insp ectors, now in their third year of investigating Iran's program. While n o proof of a weapons program has been found, serious questions about Teh ran's past work on centrifuge designs and experiments with plutonium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- have yet to be adequately addre ssed and have furthered suspicions that the country is hiding informatio n With little new information from the probe, the Bush administration put t ogether its own presentation of Iran's program for diplomats in Vienna w ho are weighing whether to report Iran to the Security Council. The presentation has not been vetted through standard US intelligence c hannels because it does not include secret material. One US official i nvolved in the briefing said the intelligence community had nothing to d o with the presentation and "probably would have disavowed some of it be cause it draws conclusions that aren't strictly supported by the facts." The presentation, conducted in a conference room at the US mission in V ienna, includes a pictorial comparison of Iranian facilities and missile s with photos of similar-looking items in North Korea and Pakistan, acco rding to a copy of the slides handed out to diplomats. Pakistan largely supplied Iran with its nuclear infrastructure but, as a key US ally, i t is identified in the presentation only as "another country." Corey Hinderstein, a nuclear analyst with the Institute for Science and I nternational Security, said the presence of a weapons program could not be established through such comparisons. She noted that North Korea's mi ssile wasn't designed for nuclear weapons so comparing it to an Iranian missile that also wasn't designed to carry a nuclear payload "doesn't ma ke sense."
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