At the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, there are no cardboard mockups of Iran’s nuclear sites that can be used for briefing the military on plans of attack. Instead, there is a very cool 3D map table that allows the viewer to fly into and through the many layers of the nuclear facilities.
A movement of the hands can expand or contract the view from an image of an individual room to the perspective from an overhead satellite. On the basis of that briefing, an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites looks easy, right down to the dialing in of the depth at which a new line of bunker busting bombs would have to detonate to do the maximum damage.
If only the reality of intelligence was so simple. The harsh facts on the ground are that neither a single intelligence agency, nor the collective wisdom of the Brits, Israelis, French and Americans, has given us a full picture of what is going on either in Iran’s nuclear program or in the minds of the leadership in Tehran.
It is that lack of confidence in the intelligence that has constrained all western diplomatic activity so far.
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