Seymour Hersh reports in the latest issue of The New Yorker
that “despite years of covert operations inside Iran, extensive satellite
imagery, and the recruitment of Iranian intelligence assets, the United States
and its allies, including Israel, have been unable to find irrefutable evidence
of an ongoing hidden nuclear-weapons program in Iran.”

Hersh cites an update of the 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in
2003 and added, “We do not know whether it currently intends to develop
nuclear weapons.” Hersh:

“A government consultant who has read the highly
classified 2011 N.I.E. update depicted the report as reinforcing the essential
conclusion of the 2007 paper: Iran halted weaponization in 2003. ‘There’s more
evidence to support that assessment,'” the consultant told me.

The views of the I.A.E.A. are more suspicious, but despite
some disputes between the agency and Iran, a very tight surveillance has been
kept on Iran through the agency, complete with frequent inspections and 24-hour
video surveillance inside nuclear facilities.

Despite obedient media lapdogs trying to refute Hersh’s
report, claims of a current weapons program or of an intention to begin one
remain unsubstantiated. “The guys working on this are good analysts,”
Hersh was told by an intelligence analyst, “and their bosses are backing
them up.” Hawkish cries to the contrary are understandable, as a Defense
Intelligence Agency analyst told Hersh, they knew the 2011 update to the N.I.E
would be politically explosive: “If Iran is not a nuclear threat, the
Israelis have no reason to threaten imminent military action.” This is an
unwelcome potentiality in Washington.

Here is an interesting excerpt regarding intelligence
efforts to determine the nature of Iran’s nuclear activities:

“The N.I.E makes clear that U.S. intelligence has been
unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to
an underground weapon-making center. In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint
Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in
place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former
intelligence officers. Street signs were surreptitiously removed in heavily
populated areas of Tehran – say, near a university suspected of conducting
nuclear enrichment – and replaced with similar-looking sings implanted with
radiation sensors. American operatives, working undercover, also removed bricks
from a building or two in central Tehran that they thought housed nuclear
enrichment activities and replaced them with bricks embedded with
radiation-monitoring devices.

“High-powered sensors disguised as stones were spread
randomly along roadways in a mountainous area where a suspected underground
weapon site was under construction. The stones were capable of transmitting
electronic data on the weight of the vehicles going in and out of the site; a
truck going in light and coming out heavy could be hauling dirt – crucial
evidence of evacuation work. There is also constant satellite coverage of major
suspect areas in Iran and some American analysts were assigned the difficult
task of examining footage in the hope of finding air vents – signs, perhaps, of
an underground facility in lightly populated areas.”

The administration and Congress have systematically
mischaracterized what U.S. intelligence knows about Iran’s nuclear program,
consistently claiming a current weaponization program is underway or that an
intention to conduct one is essentially confirmed.

Hersh’s report also talks about the possibility that the
Obama administration’s push for sanctions is actually aimed “at changing
Iran’s political behavior” as opposed to preventing nuclear proliferation.
This seems likely to me. The fact that Iran is not a subservient client state
who we pay to obey, like most of the rest of the states in the region,
represents a threat to American hegemonic dominance. And they’re unlikely to
stand for it.

Also unlikely is the notion that Iran would ever intend to
use a nuclear weapon on the U.S. or any of its allies in the Middle East or
Europe. There is no evidence that the Iranian leadership yearns for the
near-instant incineration of their entire country that would surely be an
immediate response of the U.S. if Iran were to do such a thing. If Iran does
intend to develop a nuclear weapons program, it’s because they would then be in
a position where the U.S. and Israel could not push them around on the
international stage. The secret war the U.S. is currently unleashing on Iran –
from cyber-attacks to economic warfare to destabilizing covert operations –
would be much less likely to continue if Iran had the ability to defend itself.

Yet, U.S. leadership continues to condemn Iran about nuclear enrichment
and proliferation, about its support for terrorists, and about its aggressive
and threatening rhetoric (all offenses the U.S. continuously engages in as
official policy). Unless a more realistic and sober understanding of Iran
becomes broadly accepted, we are doomed to rising tensions and a potential
repeat of the Iraq war debacle.