The headlines this week have been full of the release of the new National Intelligence Estimate, which concludes that Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen. Most of the chatter has focused on the apparent gap between the Bush administration's alarming rhetoric -- "If you are interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you should be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon" -- and the more benign assessment of Iranian actions in the new NIE.

But according to William O. Beeman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and author of The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, the NIE does not present even "a scintilla of evidence" that the Iranian nuclear-weapons program was ever an established fact. And Beeman sees no reason to believe that it was, stating unequivocally that "Iran has never had a proven nuclear-weapons program. Ever."

Instead, he tracks the hype surrounding Iran's nuclear intentions to the machinations of an Iranian exile group that has convinced a number of American lawmakers and think tankers to champion their cause of regime change in Tehran. 

"It is now clear that the Bush administration’s campaign to convince the world of the danger of Iran’s purported imminent nuclear weapons was a sham," Beeman writes on the blog Tabsir. "The campaign was one in a series of public pretexts to effect regime change in the Islamic Republic. No amount of equivocation or bluster about Iran’s 'continuing' danger can mask the fact that American credibility on this issue has been irrevocably damaged."