December 3, 2007 (LPAC)--The Bush Administration, today, released the long awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program the key judgment of which is that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, and that it has not been restarted as of mid-2007. Lyndon LaRouche commented, today, that "it would take a real incident to break" this report. He said that "It's a question of the legacy issue," that is, the Bush family's political legacy. "This does not come as a surprise to me," he said, "but it's a surprise to some," and that this development is the outcome of the Annapolis conference. "Rice and others are playing the legacy question for all it's worth," LaRouche added. "The success of Annapolis had a big effect. Cheney and London had been hoping it would fail," but instead the intelligence community stuck it to Cheney.

The intelligence community also judges "with moderate-to- high confidence" that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, that it has not obtained enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, and judges "with moderate confidence" that the earliest possible date Iran would be capable of producing enough highly-enriched uranium for a bomb would be late 2009, and while Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame, all agencies agreed that this capability might not be attained until after 2015 (emphasis in the original). The NIE judges that Iran halted its program in 2003 in response to international pressure "which indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said, in a statement, that the NIE offers "positive news," that it "confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and that "It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen." Despite the fact that this NIE is totally at variance with a 2005 NIE that claimed that Iran "currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite international obligations and international pressure," Hadley didn't say that there is anything wrong with the new assessment.