Leaked stories taint Iran nuclear debate
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Western officials leaked stories to the Associated Press and
Reuters last week aimed at pressuring the outgoing chief of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, to include a summary of
intelligence alleging that Iran has been actively pursuing work on nuclear
weapons in the IAEA report due out this week.
The aim of the pressure for publication of the document appears to be to
discredit the November 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the
Iranian nuclear program, which concluded that Iran had ended work on nuclear
weapons in 2003.
The story by Reuters' United Nations correspondent Louis Charbonneau reported
that "several" officials had said the IAEA
has "credible information" suggesting that the US intelligence estimate was
"incorrect".
The issue of credibility of the NIE is particularly sensitive now because the
United States, Britain, France and Germany are anticipating tough negotiations
with Russia and China on Iran's nuclear program in early September.
The two parallel stories by Charbonneau and Associated Press correspondent
George Jahn in Vienna, both published on August 20, show how news stories based
on leaks from officials with a decided agenda can distort an issue.
Reflecting the hostile attitude of the quartet of Western governments and
Israel toward ElBaradei, the stories suggested that ElBaradei has been guilty
of a cover-up in refusing to publish information he has had since last
September alleging that Iran has continued to pursue research on developing
nuclear weapons.
Charbonneau referred without further analysis to US and Israeli accusations
that ElBaradei has deliberately underplayed the case against Iran to "undermine
the US sanctions drive".
Jahn explained ElBaradei's refusal to publish the intelligence summary as the
result of his eagerness to "avoid moves that could harden already massive
Iranian intransigence on cooperating with the agency" and his worry that it
would increase the chances of a US or Israeli strike on Tehran's nuclear sites.
He also suggested ElBaradei had made "barely disguised criticisms of US policy"
in the past and that some of his statements on Israel and Gaza were viewed by
the West as "overtly political".
However, the tensions between ElBaradei and the George W Bush administration
were directly related to ElBaradei's public declaration in March 2003 that the
documents on alleged Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger - later known
as the "Niger forgeries" - were not authentic, after he received no response
from Washington to an earlier private warning to the White House.
Charbonneau quoted a "senior Western diplomat" as confirming that some of the
information the four Western countries want published in the coming IAEA report
relate to intelligence documents concerning an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons
research program, which the IAEA has referred to as "alleged studies".
What the anti-ElBaradei coalition is now demanding, as Charbonneau's report
confirms, is that ElBaradei attach a report prepared by the IAEA safeguards
department which reflects the slant of the quartet and Israel on the issue, as
an "annex" to the coming report.
What AP and Reuters failed to report, however, is that there has long been a
deep division within the IAEA between those who support the "alleged studies"
documents, led by safeguards department chief Olli Heinonen, and those who have
remained skeptical about their authenticity.
The doubts of the skeptics were reinforced, moreover, when new evidence came to
light last year suggesting that some of the key documents were fabricated or
doctored to support the accusation that Iran was working on nuclear weapons.
A Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA told Inter Press Service
that the reason ElBaradei has never endorsed the "alleged studies" documents is
that they have not met his rigorous standards of evidence.
The United States and other governments refused to give the documents to the
IAEA because ElBaradei had insisted that all the "alleged studies" documents
should be shared with Iran and should be authenticated. United States
officials, supported by Israel, argued that allowing Iran to study the
documents carefully would compromise intelligence "sources and methods",
according to a US-based source who has been briefed on the matter.
The most important such document to be denied to the IAEA and Iran is a
one-page letter from an Iranian engineering firm to an Iranian private company,
Kimia Maadan, which is identified as having participated in the alleged Iranian
nuclear weapons project.
The letter reportedly had handwritten notes on it referring to studies on the
redesign of a missile re-entry vehicle, and is thus a primary piece of evidence
for the claim that the missile re-entry documents were genuine.
However, Iran turned over to the IAEA a copy of the same May 2003 letter with
no handwritten notes on it, as Heinonen confirmed in a February 2008 briefing
for member states.
That suggested that the copy of the letter with handwriting on it was a
fabrication done by an outside intelligence agency to prove that Iran was
working on nuclear weapons.
There were other problems with the one-page flowsheets showing a plan for a
"green salt" conversion facility, which were attributed to Kima Maadan and said
to be part of the military-run nuclear weapons project.
According to a February 22, 2008, IAEA report, Iran submitted documentary
evidence to the IAEA showing that Kimia Maadan had been created in 2000 solely
to plan and construct a uranium ore processing facility under contract with
Iran's civilian atomic energy agency, and that it was in financial difficulty
when it closed its doors in 2003.
The IAEA, which had been investigating whether the company was working for the
Iranian military, as charged by the United States and other Western countries,
declared in its February 2008 report that it "considers this question no longer
outstanding at this stage".
Furthermore, Iran pointed out that the flowsheets for a "green salt" conversion
facility portrayed in the documents as done by Kimia Maadan have "technical
errors", and IAEA safeguards director Heinonen conceded that point in his
February 2008 briefing.
Questions had also been raised about the technical quality of the alleged
Iranian designs for a missile re-entry vehicle that was apparently aimed at
accommodating a nuclear weapon. Experts at Sandia National Laboratories in New
Mexico who ran computer simulations on the studies determined none of them
would have worked, according to Washington Post investigative reporter Dafna
Linzer in February 2006.
After the new information surfaced, some IAEA officials, including experts
involved in the investigation, argued privately that the agency should now
state publicly that it could not authenticate the documents, according to a
Vienna-based source close to the IAEA.
The AP's Jahn cited as further evidence of Iran's intention to manufacture
nuclear weapons its alleged refusal to cooperate on IAEA demands for more
cameras at the Natanz enrichment facility. "Iran's stonewalling of the agency
on increased monitoring," he wrote, "has raised agency concerns that its
experts might not be able to make sure that some of the enriched material
produced at Natanz is not diverted for potential weapons use."
Unfortunately for that argument, however, IAEA officials revealed on August 20
that Iran had already agreed the previous week to allow increased IAEA
monitoring of the Natanz enrichment facility through additional cameras.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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