Intelligence official revives Iran doubts

Financial Times

The senior US intelligence official on Tuesday stressed that a recent report on Iran had concluded that Tehran had halted only one part of its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said the November national intelligence estimate had concluded that Tehran had ceased only efforts to covertly enrich uranium and design nuclear warheads. “The only thing that they’ve halted was nuclear weapons design, which is probably the least significant part of the programme,” he told the Senate intelligence committee.

Adm McConnell said Iran continued to develop uranium enrichment technology and longer-range ballistic missiles.

Critics of the US administration’s approach on Iran had seized on the NIE as evidence that the US had exaggerated the threat. In response, Robert Gates, defence secretary, gave a tough speech on Iran a few days later, stressing that the report had confirmed for the first time that Tehran had established a nuclear weapons programme.

A spokesman for Adm McConnell said on Tuesday he was not backing away from the NIE’s conclusions but simply concerned that there had been too much focus on one element of the report.

Adm McConnell was giving Congress his annual assessment of threats to the US. He also raised concerns about North Korea’s nuclear activities.

“While Pyongyang denies a programme for uranium enrichment, and they deny their proliferation activities, we believe North Korea ­continues to engage in both,” he said.

The US is trying to convince Pyongyang to provide a full declaration of its nuclear activities as part of a deal reached in six-party talks aimed at denuclearising the Korean peninsula. North Korea has already missed the deadline of the end of last year to provide the declaration.

Adm McConnell expressed concern about the increased ability of al-Qaeda to operate in the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and said the organisation was improving its ability to attack the US.

He also raised concerns about a growing influx of “western recruits” into the tribal areas of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border since mid-2006.

At the same hearing, General Michael Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, confirmed publicly for the first time that the US had used the interrogation technique of waterboarding – or simulated drowning – on three detainees captured since the 9/11 attacks.

Gen Hayden said the CIA used the technique on Khaled Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, and two other detainees. He said the CIA had not used waterboarding for almost five years.