The Guardian - US intelligence officials are under pressure from the White House to produce a justification to declareIranin violation of a 2015 nuclear agreement, in an echo of the politicisation of intelligence that led up to the Iraq invasion, according to former officials and analysts.
The collapse of the2015 dealbetween Tehran, the US and five other countries by which Iran has significantly curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief would trigger a new crisis over nuclear proliferation at a time when the US is in atense standoffwith North Korea.
Intelligence analysts, chastened by the experience of the 2003 Iraq war, launched by the Bush administration on the basis of phoney evidence of weapons of mass destruction, are said to be resisting the pressure to come up with evidence of Iranian violations.
Anecdotally, I have heard this from members of the intelligence community that they feel like they have come under pressure, said Ned Price, a formerCIAanalyst who also served as a national security council spokesman and special assistant to Barack Obama. They told me there was a sense of revulsion. There was a sense of dj vu. There was a sense of weve seen this movie before.