WASHINGTON, February 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With drones reportedly flying over Iran to pulse air defenses weakness “for an eventual air attack”, the US intelligence, haunted by its fiasco in Iraq, launched a broad review of classified information on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

The review, ordered by the National Intelligence Council, is expected to produce two major papers – a new National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) on Iran and a so-called memo to holders, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported Sunday, February 13.

“It involves the entire intelligence community to write these products,” one US officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He said the new NIE is expected to come out soon while the memo was expected “several months from now”.

The intelligence review was expected to parallel a reassessment of information about Iran being undertaken by the Senate intelligence committee, which was to hold a series of closed-door hearings on the matter in coming months, according to congressional officials.

The intelligence community has not produced a formal estimate on Iran since 2001.

Washington relied extensively on a similar intelligence review in arguing its case to invade and later occupy the oil-rich country.

Last year, the Senate committee probed the US failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

A scathing report produced as a result of this investigation accused the intelligence community of “group think”, “poor management” and “inadequate intelligence collection”.

In a related development, The Washington Post revealed Sunday that the US has been flying surveillance drones over Iran since last April to detect weaknesses in its air defenses.

“The aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation,” the US daily said.

The small, pilotless planes, penetrating Iranian airspace from US military facilities in Iraq, are equipped with radar, video, still photography and air filters designed to compile information on the Iranian nuclear activities, officials familiar with the program said.

The US spying planes were identified after Iranian civilians began reporting seeing colored flashes and racing light in the sky in December.

Well-placed Iranian sources told the London-based Arabic language daily Al-Hayat on Sunday, February 6, that Israeli intelligence services (Mossad) has set up in cooperation with US occupation troops radars and spying devices near the southern Iraqi city of Basra to monitor Iranian military and security activities.

A former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and has penetrated Iran from Afghanistan to pinpoint targets for possible air strikes.

Iran, meanwhile, warned the Bush administration Sunday against attacking its nuclear facilities, Reuters said.

“They know our capabilities. We have clearly told the Europeans to tell Americans not to play with fire,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news briefing.

Stepping up the rhetoric, US President George W. Bush on Wednesday claimed that a nuclear Iran would be a “very destabilizing” force and that it was important for the world to speak with one voice against Tehran’s program.

The United States, and its Mideast alley Israel, accuse Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.