Why intelligence fails: lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War

Can intelligence failure be avoided? Robert Jervis begins his study of two wellknown cases, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the 2003 Iraq War, by noting that the question is more complicated than it may first appear. The most common understanding is that “intelligence failure” occurs when, as Jervis puts it, “there is a mismatch between the estimates and what later information reveals.” But intelligence has no crystal ball, and no one should be surprised that assessments of things that are hidden and projections about the future sometimes miss the mark. In this sense, intelligence failures are indeed inevitable, whatever steps might be taken to try to avoid them. A more interesting question is whether analysts succeed or fail in making the most of information available to them. In two case studies, Jervis identifies key reasons why analysis fell short while also demonstrating that the most common explanations for these failures are wrong. His conclusion in both cases is that if analysts had done their best, i.e., “succeeded,” they would have reached many of the same judgments, albeit with a reduced degree of certainty.