Crystal Ball Watch 2012

A long-standing tradition here is to come up with some prediction for the New Year, and at the end of the year see how right or wrong I was. And this year shall be no exception. So, without further ado, it is time to mercilessly skewer last year’s set of predictions:

Mitt Romney will be nominated as the GOP’s candidate in 2012. He will defeat President Obama by a small margin, but by a large margin in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida will all shift to the GOP column on Election Night.
Partially Right: I was right in predicting that Romney would get the nomination, but his campaign failed to take on the data-driven Obama reelection effort, which stomped Romney in key battleground states. No longer will I predict that Pennsylvania will swing into the GOP column, as the chances of that are slim to none. Indiana and North Carolina did swing back to the GOP, but Romney’s losses in critical states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and Iowa doomed his candidacy.
The GOP will retake the Senate as the Democrats lose seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. The GOP will hold their margin in the House.
Wrong: The GOP did not retake the Senate—in fact, they lost races that they should have won. The damage to the GOP brand is clear, not only in Romney’s loss, but in the Senate results as well. The GOP did retain the House, but much of their success is due to gerrymandering on the district level. The GOP has serious issues that they need to address if they want to be a competitive national party again.
Unemployment will remain between 7-8%, and the number of discouraged workers will continue to cause problems. Efforts to spin the economy as recovering by the Obama White House will sound painfully out of touch.
Correct: The Obama team managed to win reelection in spite of a bad economy, but the real state of the economy continues to be poor at best.
The Eurozone will collapse in 2012 as Greece is unable to maintain its austerity package. Greece will leave the Euro and redenominate its debts in drachmas. Following that Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will all threaten to leave the Euro, leaving the future of the currency in doubt.
Wrong: The Eurozone teeters on the edge of collapse, but has not tipped over yet. The question is whether German money can keep the Eurozone afloat and whether the Germans have any interest in keeping that spigot running. With France doing its best to kill its economy, 2013 might be the year that the EU faces the biggest crisis in its history, and the Euro goes down.
Apple will release an iPad 3 with a Retina display as well as an iPhone 5 with a new form factor. They will sell like hotcakes. Apple will not sell a TV, however.
Correct: What I wouldn’t have seen last year was the iPad mini and an updated iPad coming so soon after the launch of the retina iPad. Apple seems to be wanting to push the pace of its product update cycles to keep ahead of the competition.
Iran will continue to threaten to close off the Strait of Hormuz, but will not actually try. Sanctions will serve to weaken Ahmadinejad and internal corruption will cause a new round of riots in Tehran and other major cities.
Incorrect: Iran has been relatively quiet this year, especially given that Syria has so dominated the headlines.
Iraq will fall into civil war, with the Shi’ites fighting the Kurds and the Sunnis. President Obama will do nothing to help the Iraqis, but will blame everything on Bush.
Thankfully incorrect: However, the situation in Iraq remains highly restive, and there is a risk of Iraq becoming a powder keg thanks to U.S. indifference. But thankfully, Iraq is holding together despite some flares of violence.
China will face a banking crisis that will spread throughout Asia. Along with the problems in Europe, the global economy will take yet another beating.
Incorrect: China’s economy may be much more troubled than the Chinese authorities will ever admit, but so far the country’s problems have been successfully papered over.
“The Avengers,” “Hunger Games,” and “Prometheus” will do well with both audiences and critics, but amount of total box office receipts will continue to decline as even more people discover that it’s cheaper and easy to stay home and watch Netflix.
Correct: Despite some decent tentpole movies this year, the box office continues to take a beating while upstarts like Netflix continue to gain marketshare and support.
SpaceX’s first resupply mission to the ISS will be a complete success, just as heads start rolling at Russia’s Roscosmos. As Russia’s Soyuz launcher starts having more and more technical issues, NASA will fast-track plans for private companies to lift astronauts to the ISS.
Correct: Despite an engine failure on their second mission, SpaceX has shown that it can perform resupply missions to the ISS and is rapidly moving towards being able to lift astronauts into orbit. And amazingly, the Obama Administration has been willing to support the development of private spaceflight in a way than the Republicans have not. Space policy is the one area that this Administration gets right.
On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.
Incorrect?: While neither the Yellowstone volcano nor a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles nor aliens nor Planet X doomed all life on Earth, one never knows how close to doomsday we actually came… Then again, we have our own ignorance which presents a far greater threat to humanity than anything else.

On a more personal note, I have not been blogging much in the last few years, as is obvious from the state of this site. Being employed full-time as an attorney makes the prospect of doing more rigorous analytical writing much less fun. Further, 2012 was an annus horribilis for me in a great many ways, and has left me utterly drained. For those who still come to visit, thank you for your patronage, and hopefully 2013 will be much brighter. (But for those who will read my forthcoming predictions, don’t count on it…)

Predictions 2012

It’s time to close out 2011 and ring in the New Year, 2012. And as I do every year, it’s time for some predictions for the new year. So here, in no particular order, are my predictions for 2012:

Mitt Romney will be nominated as the GOP’s candidate in 2012. He will defeat President Obama by a small margin, but by a large margin in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida will all shift to the GOP column on Election Night.
The GOP will retake the Senate as the Democrats lose seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. The GOP will hold their margin in the House.
Unemployment will remain between 7-8%, and the number of discouraged workers will continue to cause problems. Efforts to spin the economy as recovering by the Obama White House will sound painfully out of touch.
The Eurozone will collapse in 2012 as Greece is unable to maintain its austerity package. Greece will leave the Euro and redenominate its debts in drachmas. Following that Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will all threaten to leave the Euro, leaving the future of the currency in doubt.
Apple will release an iPad 3 with a Retina display as well as an iPhone 5 with a new form factor. They will sell like hotcakes. Apple will not sell a TV, however.
Iran will continue to threaten to close off the Strait of Hormuz, but will not actually try. Sanctions will serve to weaken Ahmadinejad and internal corruption will cause a new round of riots in Tehran and other major cities.
Iraq will fall into civil war, with the Shi’ites fighting the Kurds and the Sunnis. President Obama will do nothing to help the Iraqis, but will blame everything on Bush.
China will face a banking crisis that will spread throughout Asia. Along with the problems in Europe, the global economy will take yet another beating.
“The Avengers,” “Hunger Games,” and “Prometheus” will do well with both audiences and critics, but amount of total box office receipts will continue to decline as even more people discover that it’s cheaper and easy to stay home and watch Netflix.
SpaceX’s first resupply mission to the ISS will be a complete success, just as heads start rolling at Russia’s Roscosmos. As Russia’s Soyuz launcher starts having more and more technical issues, NASA will fast-track plans for private companies to lift astronauts to the ISS.
On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.

From Tunis To Tehran

It is now clear that a wave of democratization is sweeping across the Arab world. What began in Tunisia with the exile of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has now spread to Arab and Muslim capitals from Cairo to Tehran. The world has not seen a democratic wave like this since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

Protests in Libya

Right now, it looks like Libyan dictator Mohammar Qaddafi, who has ruled his country with an iron fist, is about to be the next Arab despot to get thrown out. Michael Totten has an inside view into Qaddafi’s Libya, and it isn’t pretty. It’s telling that Qaddafi is playing the tyrant right to the inevitable bitter end: instead of leaving in exile, Qaddafi has ordered his forces to massacre civilians. With luck, that action will land Qaddafi a date with an angry mob and a lamppost rather than a comfortable villa in some tropical location.

That strategy isn’t exactly working for Qaddafi. His own diplomats are denouncing him, and two Libyan fighter pilots have defected to Malta rather than fire on protesters. Once the military begins defecting, it’s usually a sign that a regime is on the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, many on the right are worried about Islamist influences taking over the Egyptian revolution. And while the fears about the Muslim Brotherhood are usually overblown there is cause to be very cautious. As Foreign Affairs notes, the Muslim Brotherhood is not the monolithic organization it’s made out to be. But at the same time, there are undeniably Islamist elements in the Muslim Brotherhood, and they are organized.

The Absent President

But what continues to be troubling is the absence of American leadership in this delicate time. The Obama Administration’s mixed messages over Egypt’s revolution has discredited them in the eyes of many of the democratic reformers than we will need to win over. By failing to support the Egyptian protesters early on, the Obama Administration ceded valuable ground to the Islamists who were late to the revolution but are now positioned to seize the initiative.

For all the talk about Obama’s “smart diplomacy,” we haven’t seen much of either. Right now, the United States should be enforcing a “no-fly” zone over Libya—but so far, the Obama Administration has been as weak on Libya as they were on Egypt. Now is not the time for mealy-mouthed platitudes or half-measures. It used to be that the President of the United States would unapologetically stand on the side of pro-democracy movements. Now, our government keeps sending mixed messages.

Where Does This Wave Lead?

The Middle East stands at an inflection point. Arab and Muslim dictators are dropping like flies, and the idea that Hosni Mubarak and Mohammar Qaddafi could end up being overthrown within the space of a few weeks would have been unthinkable not all that long ago. But even though many have been waiting for this moment for years, it is fraught with danger. Right now, the popular movements that are sweeping across the region are leaning in the direction of democracy. But the longer the West delays, the more anti-democratic forces have the opportunity to seize the initiative.

Now is the time for the West, and especially the United States, to make its position clear. The only legitimate governments are those governments that respect the wishes of their people. Our position should be the same as the protesters currently risking their lives in Tehran: death to dictators.

A Time For Solidarity

David Ignatius has an excellent column on why the revolution in Iran is so important, and why President Obama should stand up and show solidarity with the Iranian people:

President Obama was right to speak carefully about the events in Iran during the first week of protest. But it’s time for him to express his solidarity with the Iranians who are so bravely taking to the streets each day. He can do that without seeming to meddle if he chooses his words wisely.

Obama should invoke the Iranian yearning for justice — which was a powerful theme of the revolution. He should cite Iran’s own rich history of political reform, going back to Cyrus the Great, whose declaration of human rights was chiseled in the Cyrus Cylinder in 539 B.C. He should cite the Iranian constitution of 1906, which established elections and basic freedoms. Democracy is not an American imposition but an Iranian tradition.

“We clearly have to be on the right side of history here,” says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment and an informal adviser to the White House. But he cautions that “if we try to insert ourselves into the momentous internal Iranian drama that’s unfolding, we may unwittingly undermine those whom we’re trying to strengthen.”

President Obama’s unwillingness to make a statement of solidarity is puzzling. Direct intervention would be a very bad idea, but the myth that any act of official support would harm the pro-democracy movement seem wrong. For one, the idea that the Iranian people actually still care about the overthrow of Mossadegh seems unlikely: Iran is a country where most the population was born after the 1979 revolution: Mossadegh is ancient history. Secondly, Obama has already “meddled” by requesting the Twitter delay maintenance to allow Iranian dissidents to communicate—a move that undoubtedly helped the Iranian resistance.

This is a time for solidarity. The free people of the world cannot turn a blind eye to the oppression that is harming the Iranian people—especially as the Khameini/Ahmadinejad regime tries to crack down on the protesters.

The people of Iran are risking their lives for the cause of freedom. As human beings, we cannot ignore their pleas. The very least the American government can do is put its moral authority into pressuring the Iranian government to avoid bloodshed. President Obama has, undoubtedly, a massive amount of political capital on the world stage. He should use it and he should make it clear that while the United States will not intervene unless asked, that we are with those who seek individual rights and human dignity anywhere they may be.

History Repeating Itself As Tragedy

Will Collier notes that Obama is acting like Jimmy Carter in 1979:

Rather than offering any crumbs of support to the Iranians who are literally putting their lives on the line for their own freedom, Barack Obama could only manage “deep concerns.” In Obamaland, it’s not as important to offer even moral support to people trying to shake off the yoke of a barbaric dictatorship as it is to not appear to be “meddling.”

This all sounds quite familiar, and everyone over 30 has seen it before. Did somebody replace the “community activist” with a self-righteous peanut farmer while we weren’t looking?

The fantasy that “moderates” within the mullah regime can be coaxed into a “grand bargain” has taken in better men than Barack Obama, but Obama doesn’t even have the excuse of not being aware of that prior history. The level of self-loathing an American has to possess to believe that the Khomeinists are a brutal, terror-supporting regime entirely because the US hasn’t been nice enough to them is pretty staggering.

President Obama is laboring under the entirely mistaken premise that because the U.S. overthrew the Mossadegh regime 30 years before most Iranians were even born, that someone we have no legitimacy in the region. That assumption is pure garbagemdash;Obama unquestionably has great power to at the very least show solidarity to the Iranian people. Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy felt free to uncategorically condemn Iranian brutality.

When the French are showing far more spine than you are, it’s a sure sign you’re on the wrong side of the issue.

President Obama is wasting his capital in the Middle East by sitting on the sidelines. The idea that a U.S. show of support would hurt the Green Revolutionaries in Iran is a myth. President Bush openly showed support for the March 14th protesters in Lebanon seeking to end the Syrian occupation of their country. Despite President Bush’s low standing in the region, that call did not hurt the Lebanese people’s cause. Why in the world does Obama think that joining the chorus of world leaders will hurt?

Collier seems correctmdash;Obama shares in the worldview of placing blame on the United States. He is unwilling to use America’s capital because he doesn’t believe in it. He quite literally blames America for the situation rather than seeing the United States as a force that could put its weight behind the crucial cause of freedom in Iran.

John Podhoretz makes the controversial, but compelling argument that Obama’s interests are best served by an Ahmadinejad win. Given that Obama has been taking steps towards deacute;tente with the Iranians and the subtle legitimization of the Ahmadinejad/Khameini regime, having that regime suddenly lose all legitimacy undercuts all of that work and makes Obama look like a fool. Obama’s interests are in a swift return to “normalcy” rather than a messy revolution and a nascent Iranian democracymdash;that reeks too much of George W. Bush for the Obama foreign policy team to take.

A show of solidarity is not “meddling”, especially when the rest of the world has made their position clear. Obama is showing no leadership on that issue, as the Iranian people are inspiring with their bravery. If ever there was a time when “hope” and “change” were needed by a people, the Iranians need it now. Too bad that on this issue Barack Obama is one again voting “present”.

Iran In The Flames Of Revolution

Right now, the people of Iran are engaged in a struggle against tyranny. The Ahmadinejad regime, flagrantly stealing an election, is now on the razor’s edge as hundreds of thousands take the streets to protest the regime and call for democratic reform.

Michael J. Totten, already a veteran observer of Middle Eastern affairs has some trenchant commentary on the brewing revolution in Iran. He calls the Iranian regime “an enemy of the entire world.” That’s no hyperbole: the regime in Tehran is illegitimate and oppressive. The Iranian people deserve better. They deserve to have a government that exists for the betterment of the people, not a government that keeps them impoverished and isolated from the rest of the world.

This revolution is being carried live on Twitter, as that seems to be the most reliable communications method for the Iranian people right now. What is amazing about this revolution is that it is the first Web 2.0 revolution. Social networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, and others are serving as avenues for communication and coordination, and brave Iranian dissidents are breaking through the regime’s efforts to stifle their voices.

This is a fight for the future of Iran. The Ahmadinejad/Khameini regime can only survive by force, they have lost the Iranian people. This will end in one of two ways: in a new Iran, or in blood.

I pray that this ends with a new and free Iran. I wish the Iranian people strength in these coming days, and I stand in solidarity with the people of Iran.

The Ahmadinejad regime must go. As the cry goes out in Tehran—Allahu akbar! Death to dictators!.

Biden’s Servile Foreign Policy

Sen. Joe Biden (in an response to Sen. Lieberman’s must-read piece on Democrats and the war) writes on his critique of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. His arguments are reasonable, but the problem is that the world he describes has little to do with the world in which we all actually live. For example:

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the “war on terrorism” that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The problem with Biden’s analysis is that all those problems are being dealt with: the Bush Administration has been the most progressive administration in this century in terms of Africa policy. We were the first on the scene for the Indonesian tsunami. We’ve been in the lead on trying to get aid into Burma. The list could go on.

What Biden is trying to do is downplay the reality that terrorism is the central problem we face. Terrorism is one of the factors making our energy supply uncertain, it perpetuates poverty in places like Iraq, and it feeds of failed states. That doesn’t mean that terrorism is the sole problem, but it is the most significant, and a focus on terrorism is by necessity a focus on doing things like preventing failed states.

Al-Qaeda wasn’t turned into a monster by President Bush. They launched the first significant attack on continental America since 1812. They massively destabilized our economy and our way of life. And they would just love to do so again. The confluence of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction is the greatest foreign policy threat we face—not the phantom menace of “a rapidly warming planet.”

And what would Sen. Biden do? The same policies that failed the Carter Administration:

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was “naÃ¯ve and inexperienced” for advocating engagement; “What is it he wants to talk about?” he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran’s nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

And exactly what leverage to we have to get Iran to change, Senator? Exactly what would talking achieve. Does anyone believe that Ahmadinejad or Khameini is going to agree to a deal in which Iran stops developing nuclear weapons? Are they going to stop spreading their influence because we ask nice?

That is the central, failed conceit of current Democratic foreign policy: it is hopelessly naïve. The Iranians cannot be negotiated out of supporting Hamas and Hizb’Allah. Why should they stop, unless we have a credible threat of force to back us up. Should a President Obama go to Tehran, does anyone really think that the mullahs would give a damn about what he said? They would have no reason to—they know damned well that he would never use force against them, so why would they bother to hold themselves to their own promises?

We tried this approach with North Korea. It didn’t work there, it’s still not working, and it won’t work with Tehran. At best, talking delays the inevitable. Teddy Roosevelt said we should talk softly and carry a big stick. The Democrats want us to go into Tehran, but they also want us to put away the stick.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we’re stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

Except talking doesn’t work. We may not have any choice but to go to war, but we’re not at that point yet. Sen. Biden misses another option: making the costs involved in challenging us too high to countenance.

We need a Machiavellian foreign policy, and the Democrats want us to act like Barney the Dinosaur and pretend that we’re all friends. You want to make Tehran not develop nuclear weapons? You make sure that the costs of doing so are high. We defeated the Soviet Union not through talks, but by making it very clear to the Soviets that if talking failed, we were perfectly willing to wipe them off the face of the globe.

Biden’s arguments on Iran don’t get any better:

It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran â€“ including through direct talks â€“ we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran’s rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

Iran’s people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile â€“ if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran’s pockets.

What is the alternative? It’s clear that talking is not going to help. The world community is not going to turn against Iran. Russia will not. China will not. Even Europe would balk.

A foreign policy based on meaningless words back with no credible threat of force is a foreign policy damned to fail—just as it did when Jimmy Carter did it. Under his watch, the Iranian regime was founded. We cannot afford such a disaster again.

We have to deal with Iran, but pretending that talk will solve anything is futile. Iran, like the rest of the Middle East, respects strength and laughs at the weak. The Democrats continue to advocate for a foreign policy of weakness in which a servile United States goes to our enemies and begs them to play nice.

Americans don’t beg, we lead from strength. That is how Reagan led this country to the end of the Cold War and how a President McCain will help lead this country to an end to the War on Islamic Terrorism.

Hizballah Declares War

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hizballah has declared a state of open warfare against the Lebanese government. In Beirut, Hezballah terrorists have already engaged in two days of fighting with Lebanese troops.

Tony Badran, blogging at Michael Totten’s site offers some trenchant analysis as to what this all means:

â€œWhat this has done is lay bare all the charades of the last two years that Hezbollah’s is a â€œnationalâ€ opposition, etc. What we saw yesterday is that Christians didn’t budge (Aounists that is), in any region. And so, what you have here is Hezbollah vs. the rest, and Hezbollah vs. the state. Politically this is very bad for them, and obviously for Aoun. In that sense it was a shrewd political move by March 14, because it hit them on a point that they can’t get sympathizers for outside their thugs (i.e., they have no allies, and they’re fighting the state!). Second, it puts them in a corner: they either force the government to capitulate, or they lose themselves. Nasrallah is against the wall.â€

Hizballah, even though politically isolated, is a grave danger to the future of a free and democratic Lebanon. With both Syria and Iran providing Hizballah with money and weapons, they could outfight the Lebanese military and potentially take down the Lebanese government.

The Lebanese also have a stake in what happens here in the U.S.:

Second, as Tony conjectures, the Lebanese are watching closely a the US presidential campaign unfolds and are likely concerned what an Obama presidency represents for March 14, especially if Hezbollah starts a war with Israel: it means the pillar of the international alliance supporting a democratic Lebanon is apt to go hat in hand to Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran and Damascus looking to â€œengage.â€ If there is another war, the US impulse will likely be to go over March 14’s head and sue for peace with Iran and Syria, which is precisely what Bush resisted.

“Engagement” with Iran and Syria is futile—they have no intention of giving up their efforts to gain influence in Lebanon and the U.S. offers them nothing that would make them change their mind on that account. There is a good reason why Hamas has endorsed Obama. Obama’s foreign policy team is the same as Jimmy Carter’s, and there is every reason to believe that an Obama Presidency will be as weak on foreign affairs as Carter’s was. His love of meaningless “engagement” presages a U.S. policy of compromise that would allow Damascus and Teheran to take the initiative. The progress that has been made by the Franco-American alliance in the U.N. woule end up stalled as the Obama team naively assumes that they can trust the word of tyrants.

This is a critical time for Lebanon. The world community must unite in support of the democratic Lebanese government and against the thuggery of Hassan Nasrallah. If that means putting diplomatic, political, and even military pressure on Iran and Syria then so be it. The people of Lebanon have suffered enough under the domination of Syria and their Hezballah puppets. It is time for the world to unite to put an end to Hezballah’s games. The great question is whether the U.S. and France will be able to get enough of a coalition together to do something or whether once again the world will fiddle while Beirut burns.

A Curious Coincidence

Ed Morrisey has a good synopsis of the declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. (The document itself is available here.) It’s conclusions are quite interesting:

We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.

Glenn Reynolds puts it best: “Well, that’s convenient.” Indeed, it’s quite interesting to note when Tehran apparently stopped working on their nuclear program. We know that Mohammar Qadafi stopped Libya’s nuclear program in response to the removal of the Hussein regime. Now it appears that the national intelligence community finds the same pattern of behavior in Iran.

It would appear that the war in Iraq had a greater deterrent effect than we had thought previously and made the calculus in developing weapons of mass destruction less desirable than before. For years now we’ve heard the opposite argument be made: that rogue regimes would rush to develop nuclear weapons to avoid being attacked by the US. North Korea’s attempt at nuclear blackmail didn’t even get them to force the US into bilateral talks instead of multilateral ones, and the destruction of a suspected Syrian nuclear facility has only highlighted just how seriously the US and its allies take nuclear proliferation.

There is another explanation, but one which changes the Iraq War from a direct cause to an indirect one: it was in the fall of 2003 that the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network was destroyed. Without that assistance, it’s possible that the Iranians couldn’t develop a workable weapon on their own or judged it too difficult to be useful. Still, the A.Q. Khan network was removed because of Libya’s choice to dismantle their nuclear program, which in turn was inspired by the war in Iraq. In either way, Iran’s decision-making was influenced by the destruction of the Hussein regime.

We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)

In other words, we don’t know if Tehran has really stopped weapons production now. Given that the Iranians are admitting to building thousands of centrifuges, it is quite likely that Iran has not halted their entire nuclear weapons program, but are creating a “just-in-time” system that would give them both weaponized nuclear material and a working device that could be combined as needed. There’s some risk that the resulting device wouldn’t work, but even if it just sprays the uranium around the Iranians have a perfectly workable “dirty bomb.”

We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

Intelligence is always fuzzy, but policymakers should not blindly hope for the best. If there’s any reasonable chance that Tehran will develop a bomb it makes sense to ensure that the costs of doing so are untenably high.

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

The fact that they’re not absolutely sure that they don’t should scare the hell out of everyone. Fortunately, it’s unlikely that they do, but the risks of a nuclear-armed Iran are too great to be countenanced.

Tehranâ€™s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

That is a bit of good news, but the question is how long the West will be willing to keep the pressure up. The costs of building a nuclear weapon need to be far higher than any possible benefit: and even that assumes that the people who have the bomb are subject to such a rational calculus. If a nuclear weapon fell into the hands of terrorists, it’s not clear whether they’d care whether the US launched a nuclear response. For that matter, who would we attack if al-Qaeda launched a nuclear attack on a major American city? The country where they got the nuke? What if they weren’t directly responsible for the lapse in security? The country that hosted the terrorists? Again, what if al-Qaeda was not there at the behest of that government?

The conventional doctrines of mutually assured destruction and retaliation don’t work in the context of nuclear terrorism: which is why the risk of a terrorist group getting their hands on a nuke is a nightmare scenario for the United States. If we miscalculate the intentions of the Iranian regime and they do think that they can give a nuke to terrorists and claim plausible deniability, what would our move be? There is a huge amount of risk in a policy of containment, and if there’s any reasonable chance of it failing then policymakers have to follow a different path.

We cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and we have a lot of ambiguity as to what Iran’s intentions and capabilities are. We need more intelligence on the ground in Iran so that we have some warning before Iran goes nuclear. The fact that we know so little now should be deeply disturbing: the last thing we need is for our lack of intelligence to lead to another atrocity.

Something To Be Thankful For… Unless You’re A Defeatist Democrat…

Don Surber lays it on the line: we’re winning in Iraq, and the Democrats are stuck in the past:

The New York Times devoted a huge hunk of its Page One on Tuesday to the good news of the return to more normal times in Iraq. The story was illustrated with a photo of a wedding scene on the streets of Baghdad.

Violence has been cut in half. And while the nation is far from the tranquil democracy that many of us hoped for in April 2003, it also is a far cry from the chaotic mess it was just six months ago.

We are winning in Iraq.

Will someone please inform the Democrats?

He’s right: the signs are unmistakable. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been routed. Without the support of Iraq’s Sunni population, they have no hiding place. There’s nowhere for them to run in Iraq, and they can’t pull the same trick they did before and retreat back into the periphery around the major cities. The “Awakening” movements are everywhere and the Iraqis are no longer willing to tolerate terrorist oppressors in their midst.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq can still cause problems, but in a real tactical sense, they’ve been defeated.

The Shi’ite death squads such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are similarly skating on thin ice. Moqtada al-Sadr is a tool of Iran, funded and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces. Yet now al-Sadr’s organization is being rolled up—at least those whose radicalism doesn’t allow them to follow his “cease fire.” Those are the ones most likely to cause problems. Getting rid of them diminishes the ability for al-Sadr to cause problems in the future. Al-Sadr is a thug, but even he has realized that attacking the Iraqi government has gotten him nowhere. His cease fire order is a political calculation—it’s no longer expedient for him to play the part of the revolutionary leader. That alone should say something about the conditions in Iraq.

So why don’t the Democrats get it? Why are they still trying to play politics over the war? If even The New York Times can see that things are getting better, why can’t they find a change in strategy?

The simple answer is that’s all they have.

The Democratic Congress has failed to achieve any significant legislative achievements. The most they’ve gotten is a minor increase in the minimum wage that has little effect, and most of the effect it will have will be negative. They’re playing to their base as a defensive posture: they think that by “ending the war” people will ignore their inability to get anything done.

That kind of political posturing doesn’t mean anything. The Democrats have become so invested in a narrative of failure that they can’t even perceive of anything different. They’re absolutely fixated on this one issue.

The more the disparity grows between the reality of Iraq and the Democrat’s defeatist rhetoric, the more desperate and out-of-touch the Democrats look. Right now, all the juvenile political games the Democrats are playing in Congress only makes them look even less like leaders and more like squabbling children. Attaching more conditions to war funding is a maneuver designed for nothing more than partisan politics. It hurts our troops, and if the Democrats keep playing these games they’ll only hurt the local economies around military bases when the Defense Department has to start firing support staff to keep in operation. If that happens, the Democrats will be in real political trouble.

The Democrats have been painting themselves in a corner for years now. That strategy has worked when Iraq has been on a downslide, but now that things are getting better, they have nowhere to go. They’re pretending like the situation in Iraq is the same as it was in 2006 because that’s when their strategy was successful. Yet the circumstances have changed, and the Democrats have not.

The Democrats are invested in a narrative, and their narrative is increasingly disconnected from the facts. (Not that it ever was.) Sooner or later, the American people are going to start to question why the Democrats seem to be so invested in American defeat in Iraq, especially when the situation seems to be stabilized. If the Democrats were smart they’d start changing their narrative to say that they were the ones who pushed Bush into conceding that the strategy of 2003–2006 had failed. Indeed, that’s precisely what Sen. John McCain is already doing. Yet to do that would be to alienate the hardcore antiwar constituency that has a chokehold on the Democratic Party.

The situation is getting better in Iraq, but the narrative in Washington remains the same. As our troops and their Iraqi allies rack up more and more victories against terrorism in Iraq, the Democrats keep wanting to pull the rug out from under them. It’s one thing to advocate for surrender in a war that’s going badly—it’s entirely another to do the same in a war that’s being won. The fact that the Democrats can’t seem to understand that demonstrates just how much the narrative has overwhelmed their common sense.

UPDATE: Michael Yon offers a note of caution. He’s right: even an enemy that’s been largely defeated can still cause plenty of trouble. All that it takes is a lucky strike in a crowded market with a car bomb for the old narrative to re-emerge. The story of counterinsurgency and democratization is often a story of two steps forward and one and a half steps back. Iraq has taken a giant step forward in recent months, but that doesn’t mean that they’re out of the woods quite yet.