Iran Intelligence Lacking

From today's NY Times:

A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel's work.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections in Iran for two years, has said it has not found evidence of any weapons program. But the agency has also expressed skepticism about Iran's insistence that its nuclear activities are strictly civilian.

The nine-member bipartisan presidential panel, led by Laurence Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former governor and senator from Virginia, had unrestricted access to the most senior people and the most sensitive documents of the intelligence agencies.

There isn't much that's new about this article. Our intelligence agencies have know for quite some time about a serious lack of human intelligence about what's going on inside of Iran, as a result of the roll back of our network in Iran in the 80's(detailed in the article.) Nor is it the Bush administration's fault that no replacement network has been implemented; going back to Reagan, no serious effort has been made to reinstate our capabilites in Iran. The problem of course is that now we're looking at an Iran that wants and might soon have nuclear weapons, and we have little to no idea of how close they are to getting them. In fact the only thing we do have is a general idea that they want them:

The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

The point that can be taken from this article is that just as we lacked adequate intelligence to know whether Iraq in fact was even working on WMDs, we lack the intelligence to know to what extent Iran is developing or has developed such weapons...therefore we should be careful about any rush to take military action against Iran. Of course the administration can simply say what they wish and assume it's true, as they did with Iraq, but I think any case against Iran will have to be much more complete, considering the public's skeptcism about what the administration says and the potential cost of any conflict.