A Near-Perfect Record of Being Wrong

The New York Times has a fascinating analysis of how hard it is to figure out what Iran is doing.

Since being caught last September building a secret, underground nuclear enrichment plant at a military base near the city of Qum, the country's leaders have insisted they had no other choice because their nuclear facilities under constant threat of attack. This actually seems logical.

Then, about two weeks ago, Iran moved nearly its entire stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground plant. This does not seem logical. "It was as if, one official noted, a bull's-eye had been painted on it."

Why take such a huge risk?

That mystery is the subject of fervent debate among many who are trying to decode Iran’s intentions. The theories run from the bizarre to the mundane: Under one, Iran is actually taunting the Israelis to strike first. Under another, it is simply escalating the confrontation with the West to win further concessions in negotiations. The simplest explanation, and the one that the Obama administration subscribes to, is that Iran has run short of suitable storage containers for radioactive fuel, so it had to move everything.

"The debate reflects the depth of confusion about the intentions of a badly divided Iranian leadership."

The debate and the confusion are all part of Iran's cheat-and-retreat strategy. There is a reason Iran claims it has answered all the questions posed by inspectors about potential work on weapons, while the inspectors say there have been no responses since mid-2008. There is a reason that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has swung from praising a proposed deal to ship much of its nuclear stockpile out of the country so that it could be converted to fuel for a medical reactor to rejecting it.

The reason may be that the gnomes running Iran are crazy.

But it may be that the audience watching Iran is.

My favorite part of the whole piece is a quote attributed to an unnamed senior adviser who reportedly told President Barack Obama late last year: "We've got a near-perfect record of being wrong about these guys for 30 years."

Undeniably, the guessing game reveals more about those making the guesses than it does about Iran.

As American intelligence official noted, "You can't dismiss the possibility that this is a screw-up."