Roll Call: Latest News on Capitol Hill, Congress, Politics and Elections
December 31, 2014

Former CIA Chief: Intel Community Can’t, on Its Own, Track Iranian Nuclear Development

dw110512 intelligence overhaul187 445x295 Former CIA Chief: Intel Community Cant, on Its Own, Track Iranian Nuclear Development

Hayden at an undated hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly)

With a deadline nearing for Iranian nuclear talks next week, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency warned Thursday that without an “invasive inspections regime” attached to any deal, “I am unwilling to guarantee American intelligence can sufficiently verify the agreement on its own.”

The problem, according to Michael V. Hayden, is that Iran is a tough intelligence target. Its intentions are hard to read, its decision-making process opaque. Under President George W. Bush, Hayden used to get two kinds of questions about Iran: about the technical nature of its nuclear program, and how Iranian leadership made up its mind to take action. Hayden said he far preferred the technical questions.

“We can’t verify this agreement in a non-cooperative regime,” Hayden, now a principal at the consulting firm the Chertoff Group, told a House Foreign Affairs subommittee. “That’s why we need the robust inspection regime.”

In written testimony Hayden spoke more broadly: “Absent an invasive inspection regime, with freedom to visit all sites on short notice, American intelligence cannot provide adequate warning of Iranian nuclear developments.”

The chairwoman of the subcommittee on the Middle East and Africa, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., went one further, saying that the current interim agreement with Iran can’t be adequately verified, either.

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