The underlying issue behind the fight against the hardliners in the White House seems to be that - in addition to the damage to the U.S.'s reputation, the failure of the war against Iraq, the U.S. trade deficit and sky-high oil prices - one more problem, perhaps a much greater one, cannot be tolerated. The end of the Bush era is in sight, and the establishment is looking forward to a change in course. Iran expert Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it this way (MP3, 36'02): 'The NIE is an interesting part of a larger narrative; namely, how the formal institutions of government are now determined to resist the White House, which wasn't the case in 2002. The head of the intelligence organization, McConnell, basically undermined the president's attempt to have a military option. It's inconceivable that the United States of America can attack a country whose intelligence services say does not have a weapons program. Second of all, the military uniformed services also will be in a position of resisting, as Admiral Fallon and others have said. In many ways, this narrative suggests the irrelevance of the Bush White House, the irrelevance of the president himself. This is not like it was -- these institutions are trying to tell the White House it isn't like 2002, when they were just going to roll over and accept the White House's judgments and the White House's exaggerations. I mean, this is not George Tenet anymore.'

The National Intelligence Estimate has neoconservative America in disarray. Hawk John Bolton believes that the White House was 'floored' by the report, and wonders whether the NIE has been used by its authors as a political weapon against the Bush Administration. In his opinion, Iranian disinformation may have also played a role. Neoconservative icon Norman Podhoretz is experiencing the report as a 'serious blow' and has 'dark suspicions' that the intelligence community is systematically undermining George W. Bush. The website DebkaFile, well-informed by way of Israeli military and intelligence circles, responded angrily to the report, and sees it as a pull-back by the U.S.: the military confrontation is off the table; Israel will have to work it out by itself. President Bush says he sees the report as a warning signal: '[They] had the program, they halted the program, [...] they could restart it'. Israeli Defense Minister Barak went a step further and said that the report can't be trusted, and supposes that Iran has since restarted its nuclear weapons program. His intelligence service, Mossad, believes that Iran could have nuclear weapons by 2009. Kaveh Afrasiabi, author of an upcoming book entitled Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts versus Fiction, points out that the evidence that Iran had a nuclear program (let alone has) is not furnished by the report and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never established such a thing. This is confirmed by recent statements from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who says: '[...] there has never been a nuclear weapons programme in Iran'. Whatever the case may be, the assessment by the group of sixteen intelligence agencies is a clear signal from opponents within the establishment to the current American administration.

The National Intelligence Estimate, excerpts of which were made public at the beginning of this month, has been known about internally for a year or longer, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. It was so long in coming because it was sent back three times by the White House with a memo stating that it needed to be rewritten, according to ex-CIA agent Philip Giraldi. Bush would have been informed in August of the fact that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Because this report has been circulating for so long, it's quite possible that it's at the root of the change in course in the American approach to the Iran problem. Since this summer, the American emphasis has shifted from the alleged Iranian desire to manufacture nuclear weapons to their alleged involvement with the Iraqi insurgency. This indicates that - in spite of the facts - the most powerful elements in the White House want to stay the course, in the direction of a confrontation with Iran. Shortly before the release of the NIE there were still indications that America was preparing an attack in the near future, based on attack plans that remain otherwise unchanged. The White House intention to stay the course is also evidenced by the fact that, despite having prior knowledge of the NIE, President Bush was still warning of World War Three in October, followed a few days later by a statment almost as forceful from Vice President Cheney: 'We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon'. Bush, on December 4, 2007 after publication of the report: 'My opinion hasn't changed. Our policy remains the same. I see a danger, and much of the world sees the same danger'. To some extent he is correct about this because Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the leaders of Germany and France respectively, let it be known in a response to the report that they had not changed their minds regarding their position towards Iran. On the same day that Bush made his statments about WWIII, Seymour Hersh, acting on the basis of information from his sources, offered a glimpse into the President's mind, saying that Bush is privately of the opinion that the Iranians must put a complete halt to their nuclear activities and will have to destroy everything, after which American inspectors should be brought in to monitor the situation. The change in direction along with the statement by Bush indicate that the neoconservative goal remains unchanged, though a few adjustments have been made to the plan.

A sense of relief resonates throughout a lot of the commentary surrounding the NIE, often even a sense of optimism. 'World War Three just isn't in there', writes the American correspondent for Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He reckons that Bush's role has been played out, 'unless a catastrophe or attack occurs'. In an article with the explicit headline Forget war with Iran by Newsweek journalist Michael Hirsh, that same optimism can be heard, though he maintains similar reservations as well. After having concluded that the case against Iran will now have to be solved through diplomacy, 'not war', he takes care to note in parentheses: 'That's assuming the Israelis don't act on their own'. Any suspicion that the optimism found throughout these commentaries might be misplaced can be traced to wording that the authors evidently feel is necessary to include: 'unless...', 'assuming...'. The significance of this wording should not be underestimated. This has to do with the fact that the data in the report, which are of such importance to the world, are of secondary importance to the deciders in the White House. That was proven quite clearly during the run-up to the war with Iraq.

The Bush Administration's targeting of Iraq had nothing to do with the facts that were presented and the arguments that were made by the world community. The world talked about facts and arguments as if they lay at the root of the question as to whether or not the regime of Saddam Hussein should have been overthrown. The desire to attack Iraq was not based on facts and arguments. What is was based on was an ideology. Because it wasn't about the facts - arguments made in favor of attacking Iraq were adjusted as necessary. First Saddam was implicated in the September 11th attacks. Later, when that didn't stick, a different option was chosen for 'bureaucratic reasons', according to war architect Paul Wolfowitz. The new option was to use weapons of mass destruction as a reason for a war against Iraq. Because this argument also fell short of reality, facts were distorted and adjusted in order to achieve the goal; 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy', as the British noted with a flair for understatement. It can be compared to a magic trick in which the public is manipulated into looking at the right hand while the left hand pulls off the major sleight of hand. Sometimes the magic gets ruined later on. By Wolfowitz for instance, who said that Iraq 'floats on a sea of oil', and by former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, who divulged the public secret that Iraqi oil was a key motivation behind America's removal of Saddam. The war with Iraq had an ideological motive, just like a potential war with Iran. But you can't convince the public with ideology. You need magic for that.

With Iraq, Bush and Cheney didn't allow themselves to be held up by the facts. At that time, everything possible was done - with success - to skirt and twist the facts. The ideology of Cheney and Bush also remains unaffected by the facts in the case of Iran. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter feels the same way: 'But what we have is an administration that has already made up its mind about what it wants to do with Iran and has been fabricating a case based on a nuclear weapons programme that the US intelligence community now says doesn't exist today. Do you think there will be a change in policy? And the answer of course is no because they have got the cart before the horse. They have got the policy out in front; inconveniently the intelligence community didn't back them on the nuclear weapons issue. [...] Anybody who thinks for a second that this National Intelligence Estimate retards the ability of the Bush Administration to engage in military action with Iran, you are sadly mistaken. The Bush administration's policy has been made. This estimate was not used to make policy and [...] the president is not going to let this estimate get in the way of continuing to articulate Iran as a threat. [... The] Bush administration has never shown a tendency to respect the normal system of governance. This estimate won't have an impact at all.'

It will of course be more difficult for the neoconservative movement to carry out its ideology in the form of what up until now has seemed like the unavoidable result of their policies - an attack on Iran. This situation 'does not mean that the chances of a military action is zero, but it just means that it is now that much harder for this administration to sell the case of war to its own people and to its allies', says Vali R. Nasr, Adjunct Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Considering the fanaticism of the neoconservatives in the White House, it is unlikely - just like during the lead-up to the Iraq war - that no further efforts will be made to this end. Precisely because of the NIE, these efforts might take on a more extreme quality in order to overcome the hurdles presented by the facts as laid out in the report.

Besides an attack by Israel, there are three ways in which these hurdles could be overcome: a spontaneous conflict, a conflict that is provoked or a false flag operation.
It wouldn't be the first time in history that one of these possibilities became reality. And up until now that same history has always shown that when that happens, all discussion and all commentary gets stifled, with the media and the masses lining themselves up as one behind the president so as to stand up to the enemy threat. It's realistic to take the warnings of these scenarios into account — even the extreme scenario of the false flag operation — for it has been carried out before, and extreme elements in the White House are the ones calling the shots.

Spontaneous conflict
This option concerns 'the very real threat of a war that erupts even when neither side wants it', as Brian Beutler describes it. 'The relevant term of art here is "proximity of forces"— an inflamed constellation of hostile actors that includes the regionally loathed United States military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Quds force, Shiite and Sunni militias in Iraq, Al Qaeda, the PKK in Kurdistan, and the Israeli Defense Forces. With such a volatile mix, there are countless opportunities for something to go amiss.' All that testosterone next to the coast of Iran prompted Professor A. Richard Norton, advisor to the Iraq Study Group, to write in February that it is possible 'to imagine a series of real or contrived clashes that lead, perhaps unintentionally, to a serious aerial and naval campaign against Iran. Or—to put it simply—to yet another U.S. war of choice'.
In the Gulf, on board the USS John C. Stennis, the LA Times reports: 'On the ship's computer maps, a thick black line delineates Iranian coastal waters from the rest of the gulf. Shades of gray mark the waters off Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, allies of the United States. U.S. pilots are told to stay well away from Iranian airspace. "We do worry about miscalculations," [Vice Adm. Kevin J.] Cosgriff said. "That's one of the reasons we want to be transparent on the radio and be talking to them a lot."'

Provoked conflict
Former National Security Council Director for Iran and the Persian Gulf affairs Hillary Mann Leverett said in an interview (videoclip - transcript) in February that '[...] they're trying to push a provocative accidental conflict. They're pushing a series of increasing provocations against the Iranians in, I think, anticipation that Iran will eventually retaliate, and that will give the United States the ability to launch limited strikes against Iran, to take out targets in Iran that we consider to be important.'
Blogger Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, wrote in September in an article Why Bush won't attack Iran: '[...] the president is not planning to bomb Iran. But there are several not-unrelated scenarios under which it might happen, if the neocon wing of the party, led by Vice President Cheney, succeeds in reasserting itself, or if there is some kind of "accidental," perhaps contrived, confrontation.' 'His gravest concern', writes The Raw Story in reference to an interview with Clemons, 'was that the US might seize on an accidental incident -- such as a collision between a US and Iranian ship or a border skirmish between Iraq and Iran -- as a causis belli.'
At the beginning of this year, Retired Air Force Colonel and military strategist Sam Gardiner describes the troop build-up next to the coast of Iran. Previously he had declared the existence of American troops on the ground in Iran, and also wrote about the intenisification of American rhetoric. He concludes by writing: 'The fuel for a fire is in place, however. All we need is a spark.' In June of 2005 he said (video, 4'10) : 'The idea will be to create a crisis. So that people believe something has to be done'.
Professor Gary Sick, National Security Council advisor under three American presidents, says in February: 'I worry about an accidental explosion rather than a planned attack that we can see coming. Every key person in the US administration says they are not planning an attack on Iran, but a lot of people in the administration seem to think they wouldn't mind if such a thing happened. Under such circumstances, it is always possible for accidents to take place, even engineered accidents.'

False flag operation
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Carter, will be in agreement with Mann, Clemons, Gardiner and Sick. He goes even further, for in February in front of a Senate committee, he warns not only of a provocation, but even of the potential for a false flag operation: 'A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves [...] some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.'
In June of last year, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern says in response to a question on false flag operations in Europe and the U.S. that these kinds of events are quite possible, 'I would say even probable because they need some proximate cause, some casus belli to justify really unleashing things on Iran....I would put very little past this crew - their record of dissembling and disingenuousness is unparalleled'.
Andreas von Bülow, intelligence expert and former German minister said in an interview with Alex Jones in April of 2006: ''The Bush administration is in a deep defensive [mode] and probably they would like to come out with a new offensive', said Von Bülow as he considered whether a new staged false flag terror attack could be launched to further an interventionist agenda.'

These statements, however, were made prior to the release of the National Intelligence Estimate. Do the people who gave these statements still feel the same way about it? The aforementioned Scott Ritter says: 'The Bush administration is going to use the gift it was given by the US Senate, this target list of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command to serve as the corner stone when it comes to launching a limited military operation against Iran that will probably take place some time in the spring. This is the plan and the NIE I don't think has changed it one iota.' He leaves open the possibility that the U.S. Congress could revolt, but doesn't give it much of a chance: 'I think war is inevitable'. Last Friday I asked Dutch blogger Stan van Houcke for his opinion. He's certain that there will be no war with Iran. I asked him how he rated the chances of a false flag operation, to which he said that it's possible, but that it's less likely now that the NIE has been published, because such operations have to be organized with people from within military and intelligence circles. It is precisely these circles that he believes are now turning against the hardliners in the White House. And it's also these circles that would have to carry out the actual war against Iran, subsequent to such a false flag operation. According to Van Houcke it would now be very difficult to get them to go along with a military conflict with Iran, even if it's preceded by a false flag attack. This last option would then have to be carried out by loyal sympathizers of the neoconservative hardliners. In my opinion this is not an impossibility because such an operation doesn't require very many people, and would in fact be carried out preferably by a small group.

Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer says after the publication of the NIE that the only way that the U.S. could become involved in a war with Iran would be a false flag operation. He sees Saudi Arabia as a possible perpetrator of such a strike in the U.S. Surely he could have named Israel as well, a country that is now feeling left out in the cold. Back in early 2005, Vice President Cheney took a variation of this option into account, namely an Israeli attack on Iran: 'Well, one of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards'. President Bush has already promised that if Israel is attacked (undoubtedly even if it involves a retaliatory strike by Iran) it will receive American military support: '[...] we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support Israel if her security is threatened', said Bush in 2005. Last week he repeated his promise: 'I have made it clear that the -- absolutely, that we will support our ally Israel if attacked by Iran'.

In response to the National Intelligence Estimate and the forces behind it, Journalist Fred Kaplan writes that a warning is in order. He supports this by citing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said recently that there is still only one president of the United States and that it is he who will make the final decision. Kaplan writes: 'In other words (and many people make a mistake in neglecting this fact), Bush really is 'the decider'.'

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