First off, let me say hello to the Wonk’s readers. Hello.

So, I have to admit, I have slightly mixed feelings about the NIE. Don’t get me wrong. If it results in a ‘surge of diplomacy’ it is certainly a Good Thing. If it helps to prevent military action it is a Very Good Thing. And, if it gives Iran a way of admitting its wrong-doing and becoming a ‘repentant nuclear proliferant’ (as Jeffrey hopes) it is a Fantastic Thing.

No, my worry is that the NIE will allow Iran to brush aside the fact that it has breached its safeguards agreement and (depending on which lawyer you speak to) the NPT as well. Ahmadinejad has already (somewhat predictably) touted the report as a ‘great victory’. Even BBC radio news was claiming this morning that, according to the report, Iran has abandoned its ‘plans’ to produce nuclear weapons. In fact, the NIE didn’t go quite so far—as the second half of the first sentence makes clear.

The root of the problem is that the debate about Iran has become increasingly centred on the question of why it breached its safeguards agreement. Worryingly few states seem to accept that Iran’s violations are a problem in themselves. (It’s important to realize that there’s a big conceptual difference between identifying violations of an agreement and ascertaining why such violations were committed). In a legal sense, the emphasis on finding Iran’s intention is a problem because it’s not the job of the IAEA to do this (the IAEA’s role is to make a finding of compliance or non-compliance—nothing more). In a political sense, it’s a problem because it politicizes the role of the IAEA even more than need be. But, most of all, in a practical sense, enforcing non-proliferation agreements becomes near impossible if the international community will not act unless it has proof that a state is intending to build a nuclear bomb. Proving that a state has violated its safeguards agreement is hard enough (although the IAEA did it in Iran) but at least it is a fairly objective exercise. Proving motivation as well is even harder and highly subjective (after all, the motivation of a state might be nothing more concrete than the intentions of its leaders). In my opinion, it ought to be the fact that a violation took place that is the trip wire for an international response.

As I hope the start of this post made clear, I don’t take the view that, having violating its safeguards agreement, we must now treat Iran as a pariah from here on in. I hope that Iran will use this opportunity to admit that it had a nuclear weapons programme until 2003 and then permit the IAEA to verify that the programme has been shut down. What worries me is that Iran will use the NIE as a way of vindicating itself. Then it can avoid addressing its numerous violations, stop co-operating with the IAEA and push on with its centrifuge programme and (as Jeffrey is rightly fond of reminding us) its heavy water reactor programme.