More known knowns about Iran

Yet again we have been misled by George Bush and Dick Cheney over weapons of mass destruction (US spies give shock verdict on Iran threat, December 4). This time the nonexistent nuclear weapons programme is in Iran, which ceased work on any such programme in 2003, if the US national intelligence estimate is correct. Russia and China have been right to oppose increased sanctions on Tehran, believing that diplomacy is the best way to ensure that Iran is true to its word in not developing nuclear weapons.

Rather than continuing to support a policy designed to destabilise and isolate Iran, the British government should follow Senator Chuck Nagel's lead and urge the US government to open direct and unconditional talks with Iran, in order to end the state of enmity that has existed since 1979. The existing sanctions and disinvestment programme are counterproductive, serving Bush's agenda of regime change, preferably by internal unrest, rather than the greater good of seeking peace and stability in the region.
Dr Lee Marsden
University of East Anglia

Your story states that US intelligence agencies are "trying to recover the public credibility lost when [they] wrongly claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the years leading up to 2003". Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine provides incredible insights into the battles between the CIA, the FBI and the Bush/Cheney administration in 2001-03, showing how the administration selectively leaked misleading paragraphs of reports, and repeatedly returned speeches to analysts with deleted information being reinserted, driving many to despair and resignation.

Suskind reveals that it was the administration, far more than the agencies, that distorted information given to them in order to fulfil objectives such as the invasion of Iraq, which was decided upon as far back as January 2001 and in which of course, our former prime minister is implicated for similar distortions of intelligence. The only difference is that we have not had any exposé to the extent of Suskind's about the wilful and deliberate misuse of intelligence, merely the resignations and worse of people who were in the right, such as Greg Dyke, Gavyn Davies and Dr David Kelly.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson

So now Cheney knows it's "safe" to attack Iran. He probably knew anyway. But now knows we know: the unknown known has become a known known.
John Clifford

Despite the fact that the US national intelligence estimate finds "with high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, Oliver Kamm (A dangerous fantasy, December 4) argues with equal confidence that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear arsenal. The difference between the two assertions is that one is based on the intelligence of 16 agencies built up over many years and supported by the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency, while the other is an opinion rooted in neither evidence nor reality.

While we should be glad that this intelligence on the absence of WMDs in Iran has surfaced now rather than being discovered after a military attack, as in Iraq, we should not think that this alone will stall those intent on military intervention against Iran. Kamm's article acts as a reminder that the neoconservative case for military strikes on Iran is not dependent on a nuclear weapons programme. Tehran is still accused of supporting terrorists in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and this could yet be used to establish a casus belli against Iran.
Stefan Simanowitz
Chair, Westminster Committee on Iran

Oliver Kamm writes: "Avoiding military action requires that the UN pressure Iran to abide by its international obligations as a signatory to the NPT". Which NPT obligations is Iran not obeying? Access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment, is Iran's "inalienable right" under the NPT. Other states, for example Japan and Brazil, have uranium-enrichment facilities and it is never suggested that they are in breach of the NPT.
David Morrison

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