Kind of makes you doubt the geniuses who published the NIE and terminally undermined global efforts against Iran's nuclear program. Because, you see, these people apparently have no idea what they're doing:

If Israel did it - the widespread assumption - it would join the mysterious bombing of a Syrian facility last September in contributing substantially to improving Israel's security standing in Washington. Israel's image was greatly tarnished in the failed Second Lebanon War, and the effort to rebuild its deterrence includes gaining American as well as Arab attention. If America did it, it would come as a great surprise to most experts in Washington. They refused Wednesday to assume America had a hand in the matter, damning evidence of the low regard in which the CIA is held.

Not that the US intelligence community is looking particularly good right now anyway, what with the whole totally politicized and mostly wrong NIE:

Iran has reportedly begun to deploy a new generation of machinery to produce nuclear fuel, a development bound to intensify a debate in Washington about whether a recent National Intelligence Estimate accurately portrayed Tehran’s progress toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon. The testing of the new machinery, centrifuges known as IR-2s, was disclosed by European diplomats and American officials and was reported over the past two days in Europe... Experts said Iran’s design for the IR-2 centrifuge showed considerable technical creativity... the IR-2 was “more ingenious” than its predecessor, an unreliable machine called the P-1, with the "P" reflecting its Pakistani origins. The official insisted on anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue.

Money line from another story about the expanding "wow, we sure fucked that up" gallery of NIE recriminations: "If I had 'til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things... I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted." That's the Director of National Intelligence talking. Super.

References:
* The U.S. and Mughniyah / Not just 'who' but also 'where' [Ha'aretz]
* Iran Is Reported to Test New Centrifuges to Make Atomic Fuel [NYT]
* U.S. Spy Chief Retreats on Iran Estimate [NY Sun]

Previously:
* Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - Anti-War Partisans Switch From Sophisticatedly Undermining War Effort To Being The Bestest And Most Objective Analysts Ever. Except Not.
* Obligatory Followup To Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - The NIE Unbelievably Punted On The Single Most Important Iranian Nuke Question (Plus: Israel Looking To React Now That Bush Is Handcuffed And Iranian Hardliners Are Crowing About Victory)
* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts