"Talking Points' for Hagel on Iran

I speak not only of Israelis, of course. There are those in our Congress and in U.S. media who are prone to raise alarms by playing fast and loose with the facts. That's another reason why I put such a high premium on avoiding ambiguity. Nor are White House officials and nominees to higher office immune from the common urge to please.

I mean to find out, for example, why John Brennan, the President's nominee to be Director of the CIA, said the following on Feb. 7 in his prepared testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"And regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems."

Never mind Brennan's disingenuousness in conflating Iran with North Korea. The question is how could he diverge so markedly from the unanimous assessment of the entire U.S. intelligence community that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and has not resumed that work. In no way does that continuing assessment support his claim that Tehran remains "bent on pursuing nuclear weapons" and ICBMs to deliver them.

Embellishing Threats ... and Commitments

Now, there are reasonable grounds to suspect that Iran might be seeking a capability that eventually would allow it to rapidly break out of Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) constraints on building a nuclear weapon. That is, of course, why we monitor Iran's activity so closely.

But "bent on pursuing" ICBMs? Really? As you are aware, Iran has not flight-tested a ballistic missile with ranges in excess of its 2200-kilometer-range Sajjil MRBM. Nor has it launched a space rocket that would be a suitable model for an ICBM.

What am I saying to you? Simply this. Caution your colleagues against mistaking for U.S. policy the occasional hyperbole that is the handmaiden of pandering to Congress. We make decisions on defense policy in the White House and here in the Pentagon -- not in Congress, and still less at the CIA in Langley.

Frankly, I am determined to avoid being put in the awkward position in which my predecessor found himself late last summer as the drumbeat for attacking Iran grew loud and intense. Secretary Leon Panetta had to authorize Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to say publicly, "I don't want to be complicit if they [the Israelis] choose to do it [bomb Iran]."

Things should not reach such a pass that Washington has to say that kind of thing publicly -- particularly when the President has taken such pains to articulate our policy on this issue so clearly. Please remind your colleagues about what that policy is -- and isn't.

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden restated it before AIPAC, saying: "So we have a shared strategic commitment. Let me make clear what that commitment is: It is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon."

Let us not endanger that commitment by unilateral attempts to widen it.