It’s Bad When The Brits Are On Your Case.

How bad have things gotten in the CIA where its mealy-mouthed NIE gets us lectured about taking a threat too lightly by the British, for goodness sake?

British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran…

British intelligence is concerned that US spy chiefs were so determined to avoid giving President Bush a reason to go to war – as their reports on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes did in Iraq – that they got it wrong this time.

A senior British official delivered a withering assessment of US intelligence-gathering abilities in the Middle East and revealed that British spies shared the concerns of Israeli defence chiefs that Iran was still pursuing nuclear weapons.

The source said British analysts believed that Iranian nuclear staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation. “We are sceptical. We want to know what the basis of it is, where did it come from? Was it on the basis of the defector? Was it on the basis of the intercept material? They say things on the phone because they know we are up on the phones. They say black is white. They will say anything to throw us off.

Oh, it’s bad. Really bad. Read on after the jump.

Not only do the Brits believe, with some validity, that the CIA is putting silly political games ahead of its actual job, but we’re reportedly taking serious heat now from inside the Israeli cabinet.

“The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz,” Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning on the Iranian nuclear issue.

“It can not be that (US President George W.) Bush is committed to peace as was declared at Annapolis, and then the Americans propagate such an intelligence report which contradicts the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons,” Cohen said. “How can we rely on the Americans if they publish this report that emasculates what the world explicitly knows regarding Iran, and renders impotent the entire struggle against the Iranians?”

Minister Cohen asserted that the report must have been “ordered by someone who wants dialogue with Tehran” and formulated an historical analogy to express just how serious the situation is: “In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians’ intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the holocaust.”

One can understand how the Israelis might take the CIA’s flip-flop with alarm. Mad Mahmoud doesn’t want to go endure the nuisance of trainloads of dead Jews. He’d rather just incinerate them where they live. Now they see one of the very few countries who have taken “Never Again” seriously very publicly stick a shiv between their ribs. They’re already seeing what could have been more moderate Arab nations cozying up to Iran after, just a week ago, standing very much in opposition to Mad Mahmoud’s intended hegemony. More importantly, the CIA has delivered a very loud message that there is a serious rogue element inside the US government and that element is brazen enough to take its work public.

And speaking of rogue elements, here’s John Bolton who calls the NIE a “quasi-putsch” and “politics disguised as intelligence”. It’s really difficult to dispute either of those contentions at this point.