Svmuu News: U.S. intelligence reporter John Hudson reports that U.S. intelligence assessments paint a pessimistic picture regarding a new round of military strikes against Iran: Current and former officials say such strikes are unlikely to have a significant impact on Iran or soften its negotiating stance. According to U.S. intelligence analysts, Tehran and Washington are locked in an indefinite stalemate between war and peace—a situation that is deeply troubling given the increasingly deadly nature of the tit-for-tat hostilities between the two countries.
Furthermore, they noted that intelligence assessments on issues such as Iran are not intended to make specific predictions about the future. Rather, they are generalizations of current and potential future trends based on all available classified intelligence—including human intelligence and technical collection—as well as open-source information. (Jin Shi)