The newest national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iran will not be issued in an unclassified version, but administration officials disclosed its key judgments to journalists this week. The new NIE assesses that Iran has resumed some level of work on the weaponization aspect of developing nuclear weapons, a change from the assessment of the 2007 NIE that such work had been halted in 2003. But the new NIE suggests Iran’s leaders are split on whether to actually develop a bomb. The reason for this disunity is assessed to be the effect of international sanctions.

Interestingly, in 2007, the intelligence community attributed Iran’s work stoppage of 2003 to the effects of international pressure. The 2007 NIE slipped the bonds of intelligence professionalism to issue this policy suggestion:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that 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 program.

Whether this Skinnerite program of behavior modification has actually been instituted in the past three years is a topic for another time. Once again, however, the U.S. intelligence community is assessing that international pressure is causing the Iranians to be of two minds about going ahead with a nuclear weapon.

John Bolton — who was the undersecretary for state arms control in 2003 — debunked the idea from the 2007 NIE that international pressure had had anything to do with Iran ceasing weaponization work that summer. As he pointed out, there had not been any concerted international pressure in the months preceding the alleged suspension of weaponization work. The main “international pressure” exerted in 2003 was the example set by the invasion of Iraq.

There has been international pressure exerted since, however: three rounds of UN sanctions, which started in 2006, and U.S. and EU sanctions that were intensified in 2010. Their results to date are not impressive. While the mullahs strive to decide if they want a nuclear arsenal, they have made significant progress toward one, and all since the first UN sanctions were implemented (see here, here, and here). Key milestones — e.g., starting higher-level enrichment, in the teeth of international opposition — have been achieved since the post-election unrest in 2009. Iranian rhetoric has been unified; Iranian diplomacy has been consistent: no concessions have been made to assuage the concerns of the international community.

Actual dithering on policy usually looks less purposeful than this. A more realistic assessment was made by Israel’s new chief of military intelligence in late January: Iran’s revolutionary leaders are not conflicted on policy; they are trying to judge the right time to escalate their nuclear effort. That assessment, unlike the reported conclusion of the new NIE, has the virtue of fitting all the facts.