Sunday's New York Times carried Elaine Sciolino's interesting story on the "hardening" of Iran's position concerning its nuclear program. Over the past four years the Bush administration has delegated diplomatic efforts to to negotiate a suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment program to the EU Three of Britain, France, and Germany. The four years have not seen great progress. The Times reported this past Sunday:

In a sign that Iran has hardened its position on its nuclear program, its new nuclear negotiator said in talks in London on Friday that all proposals made in past negotiations were irrelevant and that further discussion of a curb on Iran’s uranium enrichment was unnecessary, senior officials briefed on the meeting said.

The Iranian official, Saeed Jalili, also told Javier Solana, who represented the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in the five-hour talks, that United Nations Security Council resolutions punishing Iran for not suspending its enriched uranium activities were illegal, the officials said.

For readers who might have missed the point, the Times even ran a photo with the caption:

Saeed Jalili, Iran’s new nuclear negotiator, said in talks, “With me, you start over.”

A cynical reader might come to the conclusion that Iran's participation in the past four years of negotiations has been a charade whose sole purpose was delay.

I thought of Sciolino's Times story immediately yesterday when news of the NIE on Iran's nuclear program broke. Michael Ledeen doesn't mention Sciolino's story, but he provides many reasons for thinking that the intelligence estimate is lacking in, well, intelligence: "The great intelligence scam." At NRO he adds: "I'm not a believer." Amir Oren reports in Haaretz: "Iran laughing at lack of U.S. lack of nuclear intelligence."

In its lucid editorial today, the New York Sun explains the game being played here:

The proper way to read this report is through the lens of the long struggle the professional intelligence community has been waging against the elected civilian administration in Washington. They have opposed President Bush on nearly every major policy decision. They were against the Iraqi National Congress. They were against elections in Iraq. They were against I. Lewis Libby. They are against a tough line on Iran.

One could call all this revenge of the bureaucrats. Vann Van Diepen, one of the estimate's main authors, has spent the last five years trying to get America to accept Iran's right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war.

It's a dangerous game that may boomerang, making a war with Iran more likely. Our diplomats, after all, hoped to seal this month a deal to pass a third Security Council resolution against Iran. Already on Monday the Chinese delegation at Turtle Bay has started making noises about dropping their tepid support for such a document. Call it the Van Diepen Demarche, since the Chinese camarilla can boast that even America's intelligence estimate concludes the mullahs shuttered their nuclear weapons program more than four years ago.

So much for diplomatic pressure in the run up before the mullahs have their bomb. And so the options for preventing the Islamic Republic from going nuclear get progressively more narrow. What it means is that when the historians look back on this period, they will see that by sabotaging our diplomacy, our intelligence analysts have clarified the choice before the free world — appeasement or war.

In other words, the NIE is another installment in the continuing saga that I call "Three years of the Condor." The Sun's editorial is aptly titled "The Van Diepen demarche."