Waiting for No Dong

It turns out that the missile threat from Iran and North Korea is not so imminent after all. In Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015, issued last December, the U.S. intelligence community backs off from earlier dire warnings and says that the United States is more likely to be attacked by weapons on planes, ships, and trucks.

A good part of the rush for missile defense was triggered by a commission led by Donald Rumsfeld (now the U.S. defense secretary). "The extraordinary level of resources North Korea and Iran are now devoting to developing their own ballistic missile capabilities poses a substantial and immediate danger to the U.S., its vital interests and its allies," the panel reported in 1998. "Each of these nations places a high priority on threatening U.S. territory, and each is even now pursuing advanced ballistic missile capabilities to pose a direct threat to U.S. territory."

Pushed by the political winds, intelligence agencies revised earlier judgments that no nation other than China and Russia was likely to acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile (icbm) capable of hitting the continental United States in the next 15 years. The 1999 National Intelligence Estimate said instead that North Korea could test "at any time" a missile capable of hitting at least part of the United States. Iran, the agencies said, could test an icbm capable of delivering a light payload to the United States "in the next few years."

That was bad news. But since then, North Korea hasn’t tested any missiles and has said it will not until at least 2003. Iran has conducted a total of three tests of its 1,300-kilometer Shahab-3 missile (a variant of North Korea’s No Dong missile) since July 1998. But in two of the tests, the missiles blew up during their flights.

Now, according to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, "All agencies agree that Iran could attempt a launch [of an ICBM] in mid-decade, but Tehran is likely to take until the last half of the decade to flight test." Moreover, "one agency further believes that Iran is unlikely to conduct a successful test until after 2015."

Perhaps recognizing the problems countries encounter when trying to develop high-tech weapons with a minimal industrial base, the new assessment concludes, "U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with [weapons of mass destruction] from nonmissile delivery means — most likely from terrorists — than by missiles." Why? Because these "are less expensive, more reliable and accurate, more effective for disseminating biological warfare agents, can be used without attribution, and would avoid missile defenses."