Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The United States is leaning heavily on French and English intelligence regarding Iranian nuclear and missile development, a top U.S. lawmaker said today (see GSN, Nov. 7).

Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, described the French as having the best human intelligence on Iranian threats due to a number of long-standing economic relationships with that nation.

The United States, by contrast, severed nearly all contact with Tehran following the Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979.  "They have been isolated from us for a very, very long time.  We don't have very good intelligence," Tauscher said.

Tauscher, whose subcommittee oversees funding for U.S. missile defense and nuclear weapons programs, told reporters this morning that the United States might have lost credibility due to the current administration's "cherry picking" of intelligence leading up to the Iraq invasion in 2003.

"We're in the worst of all situations," she said.  "It's like a situation where somebody's innocent, but they can't prove it because they've got such a bad record."

Current estimates from the U.S. intelligence community indicate that Iran could be armed with a nuclear weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015 and paint a similar timeline for the development of an Iranian ICBM that could deliver a warhead at very long ranges.

Tauscher suggested that U.S. estimates might rely on assistance from international partners to fill gaps where this country's spy work is insufficient.  "I'm glad we're using a lot of international intelligence, specifically French and MI6," she said, referring the British external intelligence agency.  "I think that's all very good."

"You should believe the French," Tauscher told reporters.

In recent comments, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has "significantly amped up" rhetoric about the Iranian threat, Tauscher noted.  She said that Sarkozy was "totally unambiguous about Iran" in his address yesterday to a joint session of Congress.

"The prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is unacceptable for France," Sarkozy told U.S. lawmakers.  Since his election this summer, Sarkozy has been a forceful backer of the current diplomatic pressure and the prospect of toughened sanctions on Iran.  Such an international approach, the French president said, is the only way to avoid what he called in August a catastrophic dilemma of having to choose between the "Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

Russia, which has said it has no information that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon and has played down fears about a potential long-range Iranian missile threat, "cannot sustain that in any way with credible information," Tauscher said (see GSN, Oct. 10, and June 22).

While suggesting her comments should not be taken as saber rattling directed at Tehran, she said "Iran is deadly dangerous."