McClatchy blog: Nukes & Spooks. February 16, 2011 The U.S. intelligence community has completed a new National Intelligence Estimate for President Barack Obama and Congress on Iran's nuclear program. The key judgements, however, aren't being released like those of a November 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran had halted the development of a nuclear weapon four years earlier. But that may not matter. Because logic and U.S. intelligence community practices tell us that Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper essentially laid out the new NIE's key judgments in the Annual Worldwide Threat Assessment that he presented today to the Senate Intelligence Committee and on Feb. 10 to the House Intelligence Committee.
"We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it chose to do so," Clapper says in the threat assessment. February 15, 2011 $55 billion. "From our perspective, Mr. Danger Room. News. National Defense Magazine.