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FinalCall.com News
World News
Leaked Iran paper based on disputed intel
By Gareth Porter
Updated Oct 26, 2009 - 3:11:21 PM
WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.
Contrary to sensational stories by the Associated Press and The New York Times, the excerpts on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) reveal that the IAEA's Safeguards Department, which wrote the report, only has suspicions—not real evidence—that Iran has been working on nuclear weapons in recent years.
The newly published excerpts make it clear, moreover, that the so-called “Alleged Studies” documents brought to the attention of the agency by the United States five years ago are central to its assertion that Iran had such a program in 2002-03.
Whether those documents are genuine or were fabricated has been the subject of a fierce struggle behind the scenes for many months between two departments of the IAEA.
Some IAEA officials began calling for a clear statement by the agency that it could not affirm the documents' authenticity after the agency obtained hard evidence in early 2008 that a key document in the collection had been fraudulently altered, as previously reported by this writer.
As journalist Mark Hibbs reported recently in Nucleonics Week, opposition to relying on the intelligence documents has come not only from outgoing Director General Mohamed El Baradei but from the Department of External Relations and Policy Coordination.
Since September 2008, however, the Safeguards Department, headed by Olli Heinonen, has been pressing for publication of its draft report as an annex to a regular agency report on Iran.
Mr. Heinonen leaked the draft to Western governments last summer, and in September it was leaked to the Associated Press and ISIS. That has generated sensational headlines suggesting that Iran can already build a nuclear bomb.
The draft report says the agency “assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device.” But other passages indicate the authors regard such knowledge only as a possibility, based on suspicions rather than concrete evidence.
It says the “necessary information was most likely obtained from external sources and probably modified by Iran.” But it cites only the 15-page “uranium metal document” given by the A.Q. Khan network to Iran when it purchased centrifuge designs in 1987.
“Based on the information in the document,” it says, “it is possible that Iran has knowledge regarding the contents of a nuclear package.”
The IAEA “suspects” that the 15-page document was part of a “larger package that Iran may have obtained but which has not yet come to the Agency's attention,” according to the leaked excerpts.
But that document only outlines procedural requirements for casting uranium into hemispheres, not the technical specifications, as the IAEA report of Nov. 18, 2005 noted. No evidence has ever surfaced to challenge the Iranian explanation that Khan agents threw in the document after a deal had been reached on centrifuges in an effort to interest Iran in buying the technology for casting uranium.
The IAEA affirmed that it has found no evidence that Iran ever acquired such technology.
The only external “nuclear package” ever reported to have been provided to Iran is a set of flawed technical designs for a “high-voltage block” for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon, which was slipped under the door of the Iranian mission in Vienna by a Russian scientist working for CIA's Operation Merlin in February 2000.
Another far-reaching claim in the draft report is that the IAEA “has information, known as the Alleged Studies, that the Ministry of Defense of Iran has conducted and may still be conducting a comprehensive program aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system.”
It does not explain how the “Alleged Studies,” which are documents on work done in 2002 and 2003, could have any bearing on whether Iran is now conducting work on nuclear weapons.
Using the same language found in published IAEA reports, the draft suggests that the Alleged Studies intelligence documents represent credible evidence. “The information, which has been obtained from multiple sources, is detailed in content and appears to be generally consistent,” it says.
But that characterization of the intelligence first shown to the IAEA by the United States in 2005 has been contested by skeptics in the agency. A senior official familiar with the documents suggested in an interview with IPS last month that the claim of “multiple sources” may be misleading.
Given the existence of “intelligence sharing networks,” the official said, “one can't rule it out that one organization got the intelligence and shared it with others.” That would explain the reference to “multiple sources consistent over time,” he said.
Related news:
U.S. story on secret facility doesn't add up (FCN, 10-10-2009)
Were Iranian nuclear documents fabricated? (FCN, 09-25-2009)
Nuke Agency rejects 'baseless' report of Iran weapons program (FCN, 09-22-2009)
World community backs Iran's nuclear program (FCN, 09-14-2008)
Pro-Israel lobby dictates U.S. policy, study charges (FCN, 04-05-2006)
