RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
In his Middle East trip this week, President Bush tried to get Arab countries to stand up against Iran, saying Iranian actions, quote, "threaten the security of nations everywhere." That warning was undercut last month by the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, with its headline that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.
We'll talk about the continuing fallout from the NIE today and tomorrow. Here, NPR's Tom Gjelten has this report on the repercussions it's had for U.S. foreign policy.
TOM GJELTEN: For years, the Iranian government insisted its nuclear program was purely for peaceful purposes: to produce energy. The United State said it was to build a nuclear bomb, and it appeared the Bush administration was even considering a military strike to halt the program. The intelligence community's judgment that the weapons program had been suspended, at least temporarily, made that military option impossible.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly mocked and defied the United States, called the NIE a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers.
Michael Rubin, an Iran scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says hardliners in Iran have tried to sue the NIE to consolidate their political position.
Mr. MICHAEL RUBIN (Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research): What you often have both on the nuclear issue and also when it comes to the greater diplomatic issues, people who are favorable to the current President Ahmadinejad - a hardliner - saying, Khatami, the former reformist president, failed to bring the United States to the table. Our defiance has been what has brought the United States to its knees.
Mr. GJELTEN: But the NIE cut two ways: Ahmadinejad had been arguing that Iranians should rally behind him to face the U.S. war threat.
Vali Nasr of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy says Ahmadinejad can no longer make that case.
Professor VALI NASR (International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University): The NIE report, in effect, took the wind out of the war campaign in the United States. And that may have the effect of refocusing its domestic political attention in Iran back on Ahmadinejad's domestic record, on his economic record, right ahead of the March parliamentary elections. So in some ways, it may not necessarily benefit him.
Mr. GJELTEN: In this sense, the release of the NIE may have had the indirect effect of strengthening moderates in Iran.
President Bush hasn't apparently noticed much change, his rhetoric on Iran this week was his toughest ever. Once again, however, he had to deal with the repercussions of the NIE.
In Saudi Arabia, Al-Riyadh, a newspaper that reflects the viewpoint of the Saudi government, immediately challenged President Bush over his characterization of the Iranian threat. It said he should not preoccupy himself with the danger U.S. intelligence has qualified as nonexistent in the short term.
Vali Nasr says the NIE changed the way Arab countries view the United States and its policy options.
Prof. NASR: The Arab governments around the Persian Gulf have been very worried about the rise of Iranian power. But what worries them more is that they don't believe that the United States can execute an effective policy. Anytime an administration is undermined by its own intelligence agency and its policy looks like collapsing, Arab governments become nervous.
Mr. GJELTEN: A senior intelligence official directly involved in the preparation of the NIE judgments says they were not written for public consumption - the decision to release them came later - so there was no reason to consider all the possible consequences.
Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst who worked on many estimates as the national intelligence officer for the Near East, says it may not have been possible for the authors of the latest NIE to consider whether their report would mean a moderating or a hardening of Iranian political behavior.
Mr. PAUL PILLAR (Former CIA Analyst): Even today, looking at what's happening before our very eyes and reading what we read every day in the newspapers, it's hard to say which is the dominant effect, so it would be even harder for the authors of something like this estimate to anticipate accurately in advance just what the impact would be.
Mr. GJELTEN: Should intelligence officers even worry about the repercussions of what they report or should they just let the policymakers deal with the consequences? That story tomorrow.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You can read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and a timeline of Iran's nuclear program at npr.org.