So what’s the deal with Iran’s nuclear program?

The past few days have seen a lot of hand-wringing over Iran’s decision to defy the principal EU countries and IAEA and proceed with “uranium enrichment activities” as the FT’s Gareth Smyth and Najmeh Bozorgmehr put it. Ordinarily, this development would fill the Bush administration with glee. After all, the administration cut a deal with the Europeans agreeing to let them have the negotiation lead with Iran, and even remove the block from Iran’s WTO candidacy — provided that if the talks ever broke down, the EU countries would back at U.S. resolution to bring the matter to the UN Security Council. Now, however, I see this front-pager by Dafna Linzer in today’s Washington Post:

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that “all options are on the table.” ….At no time in the past three years has the White House attributed its assertions about Iran to U.S. intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would require a large-scale nuclear energy program…. The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic weapon, before “early to mid-next decade,” according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran’s technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures. The estimate is for acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device, sources said.

If you read the whole article (oh, and here’s a Q&A with Linzer about the story) , you’ll see that the big question Bush officials are asking is whether there will be regime change in Iran before that country acquires a nuclear capability. I have a different question — is it possible that the mullahs are copying Saddam Hussein? Recall that even though Iraq’s WMD program turned out to be relatively moribund, Hussein repeatedly refused to cooperate fully with UN officials. Among the many possible motivations, one hypothesis was that Hussein was unwilling to expose his relative weakness. Right now every country in the Middle East fears Iran’s growing power — could the mullahs have an incentive to exaggerate perceptions of that power? Developing…. UPDATE: Frank Foer, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, frets that the new NIE will be counterproductive to the “broad consensus that the mullahs must be stopped.”