CIA Recruited Iranian Nuclear Experts

This is how they knew about Iran’s nuke program:

A covert CIA operation started in 2005 attempted to weaken Iran's nuclear program by influencing key Iranian officials to defect, officials say.

The Bush administration ordered the CIA to ramp up its intelligence efforts against Iran, resulting in what CIA officials called "The Brain Drain" -- an operation intended to persuade top scientists, military officers and other personnel affiliated with Iran's nuclear program to defect, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

The information obtained from the operation provided the basis for the National Intelligence Estimate that suggested Iran stopped working on developing nuclear weapons in 2003.

What these morons at the CIA and White House didn’t understand, or care, was that they could’ve influenced the political situation in Iran in order promote democracy. There is plenty of dissent in that country that is fertile ground for pushing them towards a more democratic society, thus making them less of a threat to the U.S.:

Hundreds of Iranian students angry over a crackdown on activists protested Sunday at Tehran University, the second such demonstration in less than a week, witnesses and state radio said.

One witness, Mehdi Arabshahi, said the campus protest lasted more than two hours as dozens of students chanted slogans against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardline administration.

"Students chanted against policies by Ahmadinejad's administration, which is imposing pressures on the universities and detaining activists," Arabshahi said.

Another witness, Abbas Kazemi, said the protesters also chanted anti- war slogans aimed at the United States and Israel.

He said students from other universities joined in the protest and broke one of the university's gates. But, Kazemi said, there were no clashes with police and no one was detained.