U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003 - New York Times

U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003 - New York Times

Well this was a bit of a bombshell... Nice to see the Intelligence Community has more integrity and guts than it did 5 years ago with Iraq. Let's hope they have really good intel on which to base the assessment that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program years ago. Getting that wrong could be just as costly - or even more so - as overestimating Iran's program.

And it is difficult, as the White House suggests, to really understand the intentions of a regime like Iran's.

Of course, this is a new opening for some creative and focused diplomacy that could constrain Iran's program for some time to come. Unfortunately, given the Bush/Cheney rhetoric on Iran and the new initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, we are unlikely to see anything resembling creative and focused diplomacy on Iran in the coming weeks or months...