"Ratcliffe and Rubio said that based on that intel, they doubted the Iranians would agree to take the nuclear steps the US was seeking."
After gutting so many experienced analysts and linguists from the USIC since 21 Jan 2025, Ratcliffe and Rubio used the verb "doubt."
This sounds personal, not academic, and they discussed only US intel.
And to which "Iranians" did these two junta apparatchiks casually refer to?
Other countries have their sources and SIGINT penetrating Iran, including the UK, Germany, and Turkiye. The info they gather is generally shared amongst the allies and analysts construct a mosaic for their decision-makers.
"Oh, the Turks have a source in the Iranian border agency. Russia has been delivering items in lead-encased trucks to Iran through Azerbaijan."
"Boss, German intelligence reports the Iranians stopped buying centrifuges from that company in Hamburg."
"Ma'am, the UK intercepted a phone call made by Iran's deputy energy minister and...."
"IMINT reflects the Bushehr nuclear plant is operating without damage, Sir."
But intelligence can be manipulated to read what the customer wants.
In the run up to invading Iraq in 2003, the Bush junta USIC concentrated on poor sources to sell the war-- anti-Saddam Hussein businessmen like Ahmad Chalabi who walked around the Pentagon as if something was stuck up his feces evacuator.
During OIF in Iraq, informants coughed up their personal or tribal enemies to MNF-I, telling us they were jihadists when they weren't.
When the Iranian students, the Revolutionary Guards, seized the US Embassy in 1979 out of anger for POTUS Jimmy Carter allowing the hated Shah of Iran into the US for cancer treatment, the majority of Iranians-- a conservative society-- were aghast at this breach of international protocol and diplomacy, but were powerless to stop it.
Iranian intelligence (the MOIS) analyzes the world the same way. Look at their AI-videos clowning Dummkopf Trumpf. MOIS knows the real enemy in the mosaic isn't the hardworking, peace-loving American people, but the globally-despised Trumpf junta and the murderous Netanyahu regime.
"Michelle Obama is a man, am I right America?" --Josh Hokit