WASHINGTON - The new US intelligence assessment that said Iran halted its nuclear weapons program years ago has prompted no change in US military planning, a senior military official said on Friday.
Lieutenant General John Sattler, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Staff, said the Pentagon was still sorting through the implications of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.
“But I can state there has been no course correction, slowdown, speedup given to us inside the Joint Staff based on the NIE,” Sattler told reporters.
Sattler said the estimate was being weighed along with other developments, including an Iranian pledge not to support the flow of weapons to insurgents in neighboring Iraq.
Asked whether Iran is now viewed as less of a threat in light of the NIE, Sattler said: “That is a strategy question and a policy question and we are in the process of discussing it.”
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to discuss the intelligence findings and Iran in a major speech Saturday in Bahrain to a regional conference on international security, officials said.
The new assessment reversed the US intelligence community’s previous assessment in 2005 that Iran had a covert program and was determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
The 2007 estimate declared with “high confidence” that the secret program was halted in 2005 in response to international pressure and isolation, suggesting that Iran was more susceptible to those pressures than previously thought.
