But considering the track record of the US intelligence establishment, having been flatfooted over everything from the breakup of the USSR to 9/11 to the Iraq nuclear/CBW programs, why should we give this estimate any special credence? In fact, a crontrarian view would probably be statistically more reliable.

The short answer to Dan's question is no.

Saddam Hussein had a domestic interest in exaggerating Iraq's arsenal of deadly weapons and advertising his willingness to use them; they were a threat to his neighbors, but primarily a deterrent to internal rebellions. This is something Western observers never really appreciated until after the invasion.

Iran's government does not face anything like the same internal situation, and exaggerating its nuclear potential does not really help it with respect to any of its neighbors. Also, there really are good reasons for Iran to want a civilian nuclear power industry, something even Iranians who are not keen to develop a weapons arsenal seem to want.

One thing we should probably keep in mind is the improbability of Iran's having a weapons-capable nuclear program and a coordinated strategy for maximizing the political returns on it at the same time. Either of these things by itself would require a high level of technical knowledge, leadership, and organization. We know more about how Iran makes foreign policy than we do about its nuclear program (personally I don't think the CIA estimate is much more than an educated guess), but from what we have seen so far we are not dealing with any Iranian Bismarcks or Kissingers here. In some areas Iran has one policy, in others -- Iraq, for instance -- it has more than one. In this extraordinarily complicated area there may be anywhere from none to about six. There is a lot of just muddling through in Tehran, it seems to me, something that is also true in many other capitals including our own.

This is a newspaper summary of unnamed sources' summaries of an NIC summary of agencies' summaries of supervisors' summaries of analysts' summaries of intelligence data. Given the stakes, the intelligence community's track record in comparable situations (India, anyone?), and The Post's apparent desire to be a playa instead of an honest info-broker, it'd be nice to see some factual foundation for all this before changing one's mind about anything.

It also might be worthwhile to read the article closely, to try to determine just what's behind the headline. The tidbits provided by the unnamed sources don't appear to vary greatly in their details from earlier estimates from the Administration.

The story also lacks the obvious meta-inquiry: where's the analysis of the unnamed sources' potential motivations in leaking the NIE crumbs? That, or their identities.

(Yawns.) Wake me up when there's some actual news about Iran's nuclear program, or when reading The Post doesn't require a kind of latter-day Kreminology.

I guess we all have to accept that nobody knows how far advanced the Iranian program is. Probably not even any Iranian, given the unknowns regarding future progress they too don't know.

At least ten years is an improvement on "within five years" repeated every year since 1995. (But he sagacious Cheney and Bolton I suppose remain as knowing as ever.)

But would it be the end of the world if Iran does finally get the second Islamic bomb? Granted, it would deter our invading them--but to my mind, that's a foolish idea anyway. But as for their taking aggresive actions behind the shield of their nukes--that would be the height of foolishness on their part, given our capabilities (and recklessness). Indeed, their having nuclear capabilities might well make them more cautious. since American fears would be heightened by them and American capabilities would remain overwhelming.

The danger isn't so much that Iran would exploit its nuclear deterrent as that its capability would induce Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to go nuclear (probably with the assistance of Pakistan). The region would become much less stable.