Iran is what happens when leaders ignore their spies

Intelligence agencies are often blamed when the use of military force has an unexpected or negative outcome.Punditsoftenargueleaders end up in difficult situations because they are not fully informed, orintelligence agencies got it wrong.

Of course, analysis is sometimes wrong.Intelligence failuresdo happen and can lead to bad decisions and disastrous outcomes. When intelligence agencies fail,as they did before 9/11, the price is steep. But,more often than not, intelligence analysis is very good.

Perceived failures are far more likely when political leadersmanipulate, ignore or even revise intelligence findingsfor their own purposes.

The Donald Trump administration appears to be playing politics with intelligence regarding the ongoing United States-Israel war in Iran. Tulsi Gabbard, the current director of national intelligence, told US congress last week that the judgment of whether Iran posed animminent threatbelonged to the president.

This statement exposes how intelligence was politicized and various agencies ignored in the lead-up to the conflict.

Modern intelligence agencies resulted from difficult experiences; the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for example, was only established in 1947, six years after theJapanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. had sufficient information to foresee the attack, but theinstitutions of the time and the interpretations of political leadersfailed to put a complete picture together.

Dramatized spycraft makes forgreat entertainment. But the more important work of intelligence agencies is painstakingly collecting and assessingbits and pieces of information of various kinds.

Experiences like Pearl Harbor resulted in practices that guard against individual interpretation, force analysts to consider alternatives and subject assumptions to the critical eye of experts. It’s a massive undertaking: between100,000 and 120,000 peoplenow work in the US intelligence community.

Intelligence agencies, by the nature of what they examine, often have incomplete data. They must work carefully to avoid bias.

These biases range from internal biases, such as the concept ofmirror imaging, to external ones, such aspolitical interference. Recent history is replete with examples of political interference in intelligence assessment to their own country’s detriment.

Most European analystsdid not believeRussia would invade Ukraine in the lead-up to the full-scale Russian assault in 2022. The reason for their incredulity was that given Russia’s stated strategic goals, a direct invasion would compromise the country.

Vladimir Putin, however, hadisolated himselffrom objective analysis and continues to do so. Instead, the structure of the Russian stateencouraged peoplewho agreed with him rather than those who provided analysis based on expertise.

The result is a war entering its fifth year, with a heavytoll on the Russian peopleand Putin’s dream of a stronger Russia floundering.

But the US doesn’t need to look abroad for simil