Pressure Lifts to Move Against Iran Thanks to New Intelligence Report.

For much of the world, the bottom line of the new US intelligence assessment on Iran may be this: Past efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear program have had some success — so there may be time for diplomacy to solve the problem of Tehran's possible weapons ambitions, after all.

It now appears unlikely that the Bush administration will be able to win support for a fresh round of international sanctions against the Iranian regime, say experts. Furthermore, given the conclusions of the intelligence report, it's almost impossible to imagine any global support for a US military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. [...]

"We are going to get a lot more pushback from a lot more countries," says Jon Wolfsthal with the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). [...]

"The US intelligence community analysis indicates that it is highly probable that the US and the international community have some 4 to 7 years to negotiate before Iran could become a nuclear power," writes CSIS military expert Anthony Cordesman in an analysis of the NIE. "It provides a major argument against any early military action against Iran, and it refutes much of the hard-line rhetoric emerging from various neoconservatives."

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