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In September 2007, before the release of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, I wrote an article for Salon titled "Why Bush Won't Bomb Iran."

At the time, the belief that George Bush and Dick Cheney would take military action against Iran was palpable. When I wrote my piece which was based on a great number of discussions with intelligence analysts, military brass, and others in the national security bureaucracy, I was temporarily vilified by voices on the left and the neoconservative right for popping the bubble of their deterministic obsession that the US was on its way to bombing Iran.