WASHINGTON - Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more warnings about the threats they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policymakers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran's role in Hezbollah's recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

The dissonance is surfacing just as the intelligence agencies are overhauling their procedures to prevent a repeat of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate - the faulty assessment that in part set the United States on the path to war with Iraq.

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized U.S. spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran's weapons programs. "Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian WMD programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments," the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction.

Some policymakers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports - including some from the Israeli government - of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don't know how to link anything together," said one senior U.S. official.

"We're not in a court of law," he said. "When they say there is 'no evidence,' you have to ask them what they mean? What is the meaning of the term 'evidence'?"

The criticisms do not appear to be focused on any particular agency, like the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the State Department's intelligence bureau, which sometimes differ in their views.

Officials from across the government - including from within the Bush administration, Congress, and American intelligence agencies - spoke for this article on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a debate over classified intelligence information. Some officials said that given all that had happened over the past four years, it was only appropriate that the agencies took care to avoid going down the same path that led the United States to war with Iraq.

"Analysts were burned pretty badly during the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

Several intelligence officials said that American spy agencies had made assessments in recent weeks that despite established ties between Iran and Hezbollah, there was no credible evidence to suggest either that Iran ordered the Hezbollah raid that touched off the recent fighting or that Iran was directly controlling attacks against Israel.