Several articles highlighting what the recent NIE on Iran means for policy.  The Wall Street Journal questions how the intelligence community can be so certain Iran stopped its weapons program in 2003, David Ignatius at the Washington Post thinks it validates the diplomatist view that the "Mad Mullahs" are deterrable, and Robert Baer (a former CIA operative) thinks Bush is using this to get close to Iran becuase things are calming in Iraq and we need them to keep it all pacified.

Bottom line concern is that our intellignce fails regularly.  It failed before 9/11.  It failed that Saddad CURRENTLY had WMD, it failed that Saddam had made as much progress as he did in the 80s and (we found out after the 1991 Gulf War), it failed to even foresee the fall of the Soviet Union.  That said, how can anyone be confident of intelligence whether it supports hawkish views or dovish? 

The fear we should have is that Iran is being effectively deceptive.  While it is certainly possible the "Mad Mullahs" may be more rational than many give them credit for, it really may not be all that irrational for them to hand something off to a proxy that is two or three steps removed from being directly controlled by them.  That means they would have plausible deniability and in this world, deniability means its pretty tough to do retaliation.  The real threat is that it may, at some point, be quite "reasonable" to do what may be only thought of as "mad." 

If that is so, then we may still have a problem with someone who is deterrable in the classic sense but understands the seams and faultlines of global opinion and can manipulate it.