The just-released National Intelligence Estimate, which concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, should lead to a change in the Bush Administration's

dangerous and deluded policy of coercive diplomacy. But rather than using the NIE to announce a policy shift, an Administration stripped of credibility is still arguing the case for ratcheting up pressure on Tehran and for refusing to withdraw the threat of military force.

The NIE repudiates a 2005 estimate the White House has used to depict an Iran relentlessly working to develop nuclear weapons, and it's a ringing vindication of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has argued for years that there's no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. If the new NIE, which incorporates the findings of sixteen intelligence agencies, represents the intelligence community's resistance to the meddling of White House hardliners, it's most welcome. It should certainly encourage stronger resistance to Administration saber rattling from the media and Congress members; too many of the latter--including leading Democrats--have accepted White House alarmism on Iran.

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