The Crossed Pond

Andrew Sullivan mirrors my own thoughts almost exactly.

It’s clearly the most pertinent question. It’s November 2006. You’re an administration in lots of hot water, desperate for some good news in Iraq, eager to find some shred of evidence that your foreign policy strategy isn’t a total catastrophe – and your intelligence agencies tell you that there’s no massive urgency at all, and that the Iranians suspended the worst of their program three years ago. It helps vindicate your Iraq policy, or can be spun that way. But you don’t tell anyone about it. In fact, you actively tell the American people and the world the opposite. Why?

The only conceivably credible answer to me is that Cheney simply insisted the good news wasn’t true, and blocked its publication and dissemination. And he did this while he and the president offered up the direst warnings about Iran’s nukes – World War III and the like. Was this a bluff? Or was it willful refusal to face reality … until the agencies broke through? I definitely have a sense that Gates may have been the instigator here; and what this means is that the Rice-Gates twofer has now overwhelmed the veep.

I think, as Adam alludes to below, a legitimate case could be made that the loose cannon rhetoric and stepped up international pressure of this administration spooked the Iranians into suspending their nuclear programs. That certainly sounds plausible. However, the fact that this report was not just suppressed, but that the rhetoric from the administration, who knew they were lying, was actively pushing the American public towards the opposite conclusion gives lie to that notion, or at least rather severely problematizes it.

I think the only conclusion one can reasonably reach here is that a peaceful resolution or at least stimying of Iran’s nuclear program was not the goal of this administration. How else to read it?