Expanding on the new US view that Iran might be a rational actor rather than a maverick state, the NIE adds, “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might — if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible — prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons programme”.

After months of an escalating war of words between Washington and Tehran, including the talk of a World War III by George W. Bush — and mounting speculation that the president is gearing up to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in his final months as president, the NIE’s conclusions are nothing short of breathtaking.

It is not often that government departments, let alone the security and intelligence bureaucracies, confess their sins in public. Since the earlier judgment highlighting an imminent threat of Iran’s nuclearisation had a huge impact on the policy debate, Washington perhaps sees the new estimate as an opportunity to redesign US policy towards Tehran.

For quite some time many voices in the US establishment have been urging Bush to engage Iran in a direct dialogue. Realists have pointed to the importance of such a dialogue in managing the current US objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which share borders with Iran.

The Bush administration, until now, has been reluctant to embark on such a dialogue. But change is clearly under way in the US policy towards the Middle East. If the recent Annapolis peace conference marked a big departure from the Bush administration’s attitude to the peace process between Arabs and Israelis, the NIE points to potential restructuring of American policy towards the Persian Gulf.

... contd.