Iran Affairs

Reporting allegations as fact on Iran

I was amused by the NY Time's coverage of the alleged "secret" nuclear evidence that the IAEA is supposedly hiding from the world:

The Obama administration and its European allies are pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency to make public evidence that they believe points toward an Iranian drive to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon...

Not "alleged evidence", no. Just "evidence". The assumption that such evidence exists, which the IAEA has refused to "make public" is built into the reporting.

[As a sidenote: see how the US official is quoted in the NY TImes as saying "What we and all the allies are pressing for is for the full case to be laid out, in public” -- nevermind that the US has thus far refused to make the Laptop of Death and the documents therein available in full for the IAEA and the world to judge its veracity and to allow Iran an opportunity to disprove.] 

[Second sidenote: note how Iran is supposedly gaining "the ability" to make a bomb -- not the bomb itself. Not mentioned is that about 40 countries already have "the ability" to make a bomb since any country with any nuclear program is theoretically "able" to one day make a bomb if it so decides. The whole case against Iran is based on deliberately confusing "capabilities" and "intent to acquire abilities" with actual bomb-building. Not that the NY Times would care to explain that little bit of deliberate obfuscation.]

This reminded me of an article I read in the New Statesman back in 2004 entitled "The Myth of the Neutral Reporter": 

Last month, the BBC's Washington correspondent, Ian Pannell, reported
that George W Bush was under pressure to ensure he had a policy "to deal
with the threat from Iran". Not the alleged threat, but "the threat".

This kind of subliminal propaganda primed the public to support an
attack on Iraq...

To understand why reporters consistently fail to challenge even the most
obvious government deceptions, we need to look at the origins of
"professional journalism." Early last century, the industrialisation of
the press, and the associated high cost of newspaper production, allowed
wealthy capitalists backed by advertisers to achieve dominance in the
mass media. Unable to compete, the previously flourishing radical press
was pushed to the margins.

The notion of "balanced" and "professional" journalism was invented at
the same time. The American media analyst Robert McChesney explains:
"Savvy publishers understood that they needed to have their journalism
appear neutral and unbiased, notions entirely foreign to the journalism
of the era of the Founding Fathers, or their businesses would be far
less profitable." By promoting education in formal "schools of
journalism", owners could claim that autonomous editors and reporters
made decisions based on professional judgement, rather than the needs of
bosses and advertisers. Owners could then sell their media monopoly as a
"neutral" service to the community.

Is Iran really "stonewalling" the IAEA?

You will see many reports claiming that Iran has been "stonewalling the IAEA." (for my many readers in Iran: stonewalling means refusing to answer.)

In Aug 2007, Iran and the IAEA agreed to resolve a list of issues. As part of this agreement, called the Modalities Agreement, Iran agreed to address the "alleged studies" upon "receiving all related documents."

By Feb 2008, the IAEA said that all outstanding issues had been resolved -- except for the "alleged studies" and the had US refused to give the full documentation to Iran OR the IAEA. Nevertheless Iran had provided answers to some of the allegations, even though they exceeded the authority of the IAEA to investigate. The IAEA only has the authority to investigate nuclear issues -- and the IAEA itself has said that it has "no credible evidence" that the alleged studies by Iran involved any nuclear material:

"it should be emphasized … that the Agency has not detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies" (IAEA Gov/2008/15 at paragraph 28).

"[I]t should be noted that the Agency has not detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard" (IAEA Gov/2008/4 at paragraph 54 )

Regarind claims that Iran has "refused to answer" IAEA questions, Peter Casey has written:

[Saying] that "Iran refuses to answer" IAEA questions is grossly misleading. As documented in every single IAEA board report since the laptop allegations first surfaced, Iran has consistently and adamantly answered many of the allegations by describing them as baseless and fabricated. In addition, it was only in February 2008 that the U.S. gave the IAEA permission to show any of the documents to Iran to enable it to respond (IAEA Gov/2008/4 at paragraph 37). The U.S. further manipulated the IAEA's efforts by providing "much of this information [to the IAEA] only in electronic form" and "not authorizing the [IAEA] to provide copies to Iran" (IAEA Gov/2008/15 at paragraph 16). The U.S. even refused to give the IAEA itself copies of some material. For example, the U.S. did not let the IAEA have copies of key documents concerning the "ballistic missile warhead" for a "nuclear weapon" ... The agency was "therefore unfortunately unable to make them available to Iran."

Thus far, Iran has NOT received the documents it is supposed to refute, despite the fact that the USA has been selectively leaking it to the press and holding media PR events usign the material, because the US refuses to allow anyone to independently check the validity of the documents nor the "Laptop of Death" from which they were obtained.

So, who is "stonewalling" whom here?

In short, Iran is being required to refute allegations in documents it has not been allowed to see. Meet my friend, Nukie the Nuclear Spaghetti Monster.

Misinformation over Iran's nuclear program -- "Time and time again"

Remember the reports about how Israeli and US had accused outgoing IAEA head Elbaradei of "censoring" reports on Iran and "hiding" damning summary of secret intelligence on Iran's nuclear program that supposedly proved Iran was making nuclear weapons? and how there was an "internal debate" in the IAEA over the issue? And how famously pro-Israeli and pro-MKO Congresswoman from Florida had condemned the IAEA?

Well, not so fast:

The U.N. nuclear watchdog on Friday hit back at reports that it had hidden information about Iran's disputed atomic program, in a rare public comment on the agency's sensitive inspections work.

Some media reports, citing unnamed Western diplomats and Israeli officials, have said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei withheld "evidence" of an alleged Iranian drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

"Time and again unidentified sources feed the media and Member States with misinformation or misinterpretation," IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said in a statement.

"There are articles claiming that the (IAEA) secretariat is hiding information, and that there are sharp disagreements among staff members involved about the contents of the report. Needless to say, such allegations have no basis in fact." 

"Time and time again" -- that's an interesting reminder of the the long history of Israel and the US bashing the IAEA and promoting disinformation about Iran's nuclear program. I can think of a number of occasions when the friction became public:

1- When the Israelis accused Elbaradei of being "pro-Iranian" because they didn't like the IAEA's conclusion that there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

2- When the US had resorted to tapping Elbaradei's phone in order to force him out of office.

3-When it was claimed that enriched uranium had gone missing right under the IAEA's nose, which turned out no to be true.

4- When a US congressional report claimed that a weapons inspector had been removed by the IAEA from Iran because he had supposedly wanted to "tell the truth" about Iran's nuclear program, and that Iran was making highly-enriched uranium -- which was branded as not being honest by the IAEA.

5- When they warned Elbaradei that he was only in charge of the technical matters of verification and and should not "interfere in diplomacy" by "taking the wind out of the sails of pressuring Iran" -- meaning he should not shoot down the nuclear scaremongering over Iran with facts and constructive measures.

6- When the IAEA officials complained in 2009 that US intelligence provided to the IAEA since 2002 had turned out to be bogus.

7- Or when they criticized the IAEA for drawing up a timetable to resolve oustanding issues (which Iran abided by, and the IAEA said all the issues had been resolved except for "alleged" studies that Iran "supposedly" carried out in the past.)

8- Or when they claimed that Iran had "more uranium" than expected by the IAEA which supposedly the UN said was enough to make a bomb (the UN said no such thing -- that was a conclusion the NY Times and other outlets reached on their own and falsely attributed to the UN.)

9- When it was claimed in 2007 that Iran had "blocked" access to international inspectors -- which again the IAEA had to debunk.

The IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program - what's really going on (Part 2 of 2)

Previously I reviewed the issue of the "alleged studies" by Iran into making nuclear weapons. This is the continuation of the saga of these alleged studies, based on which the US is engaged in a PR campaign to portray Iran as a nuclear danger.

Review of Part 1

As I mentioned in part 1 of this article, Iran and the IAEA had reached an agreement (known as the "Modalities Agreement") over a timetable to resolve the disputes about Iran's nuclear program in August 2007.

According to the Modalities Agreement between the IAEA and Iran, Iran was to address the allegations about the "alleged studies" it supposedly carried out up to 2003 into making nuclear weapons, "upon receiving all related documents."

Furthermore, the agreement specifically says that that aside from the issues identified in the document, there are “no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran’s past nuclear program and activities.”

I then mentioned how the November 2007 IAEA report stated that Iran had cleared up several of the items on the Modalities Agreement workplan, and the IAEA said it was working with "third parties" to obtain and present the documents on the "alleged studies" to Iran so that could be cleared up too.

I also reviewed the 2007 National INtelligence Estimate which undermined the Bush administration's claims that Iran posed an immediate nuclear danger, since it concluded that Iran no longer had an active nuclear weapons program.

The February 2008 IAEA Report

Three months following the Nov 2007 IAEA report which said that implementation of the Modalities Agreement had started, on Feb 22nd, 2008 the IAEA issued another report on the status of Iran's nuclear program. According to this report, all of the remaining issues on the Modalities Agreement list had been resolved, with the exception of the "Alleged Studies" issue. (See my paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the Feb 2008 IAEA report on Iran here.)

Regarding the Feb 2008 report, IAEA director ElBaradei saidi:

[W]e have made quite good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, with the exception of one issue, and that is the alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the past. We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran´s enrichment programme. 

The only outstanding issue was the "alleged studies" which the IAEA urged Iran to resolve.

Note that the US only provided the IAEA with some of the documents from the laptop on Feb 15th, just a week prior to the IAEA's issuance of the Feb 22 report, despite the fact that the US had been shopping around the laptop as evidence of a nuclear weapons program since 2005 (thus ensuring that the Feb 2008 IAEA report on Iran would not give Iran a "clean bill of health".)  Even then, the full information was not made available; only selective bits and pieces were disclosed by the US to the IAEA:

According to the Washington Post:

The Bush administration’s refusal to turn over the data has been a source of friction with Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, who has argued that Iran must be given a fair chance to examine some of the case that Washington has developed.

But it remains unclear how much of the data Dr. ElBaradei will be allowed to disclose to the Iranians. In particular, it is not clear if the information includes diagrams and designs that were secretly taken out of Iran on a laptop computer in 2004 and turned over to the CIA.

And according to the Associated Press, the information released by the US was judged to be of "doubtful value' anyway:

Diplomats: U.S. again shares information on Iran's nuclear program
February 22, 2008 Friday 12:06 PM GMT
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

VIENNA Austria

Ahead of a crucial report on Iran's nuclear activities Friday, Washington has given the U.N. nuclear watchdog more information on what it says were Tehran's attempts to make atomic weapons but much of it is of doubtful value, diplomats said...

The newest U.S. nuclear information, including some intelligence declassified for sharing with the agency, was handed over to IAEA Deputy Director Oli Heinonen last Friday, just a few weeks after a first batch of material was forwarded by the Americans, the diplomats said.

But the information sheds little new light on what the Americans say were Iranian attempts to develop nuclear weapons. "It's not the amount but the quality that counts," said one diplomat who was dismissive of the new U.S. file.

Another diplomat said senior agency officials dismissed the information as relatively insignificant and coming too late.

Note that the IAEA report itself says it had no evidence itself to back up the claims about the "alleged studies":

However, it should be noted that the Agency has not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard.

And note the follow-up in Paragraph 57 of the IAEA report:

With the exception of the issue of the alleged studies, which remains outstanding, the Agency has no concrete information about possible current undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

The IAEA  presentation on the Alleged Studies

The US media reported on March 3, 2008 that the previous Monday (making it Feb 25th, 2008) the IAEA's Deputy Director for Safeguards, Ollie Heinonen, presented the IAEA's Board of Governors with some of the evidence from the "Laptop of Death" provided to the IAEA by the US on Feb 15th 2008. Ollie Heinonen was simply presenting the material obtained from the US, but the US media made it sound as if the material came from the IAEA and that the IAEA was vouching for it. Note the Washington Post headline: "U.N. Says Iran May Not Have Come Clean on Nuclear Past" -- when in fact the UN (IAEA) was simply presenting the information that the US says proves Iranian nuclear weapons intentions. Subsequently, the notes from the presentation were conveniently made available to the media, which supposedly contained new (but not really -- actually recycled since 2004) allegations about an Iranian nuclear warhead design.

This was the second time that the US had presented selected bits of the documents obtained from the Laptop of death to an audience in order to convince them of the veracity of the "alleged studies" claims. The first time was in 2005, the second time was in Feb 2008 just days before the IAEA was due to issue a report on Iran's nuclear program. The "leaking" of the notes from the IAEA's presentation occurred just a few days before the UNSC was set to vote on a sanctions on Iran. 

Now is a good time to remind readers: the "Laptop of Death" itself has STILL never been provided in full to the IAEA by the US for independent vetting and analysis, and the documents obtained from the laptop have still not been presented to Iran despite the requirement of the Modalities Agreement -- and yet Iran is expected to refute them anyway.  

THe May 2008 IAEA report

So, after the Feb 2008 report by the IAEA said that Iran had cleared up all the the remaining disputed about its nuclear program -- except for the "alleged studies", the IAEA issued a new report in May 2008. The IAEA report stated that Iran had also submitted replies to questions regarding the "alleged studies", and Iran's answers were still under review by the IAEA at the time the report was published. The report also stated that Iran may have more information on the alleged studies, which "remain a matter of serious concern", but that the IAEA itself had not detected evidence of actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear weapons or components.

And this is the important part: The IAEA also stated that it was not itself in possession of certain documents containing the allegations against Iran, and so was not able to share the documents with Iran.

The media, and particularly the NY Times of course, mischaraterized the report as usual, claiming among other things that the IAEA had accused Iran of "wilfull lack of cooperation" when the report itself actually said no such thing. (I pointed out the problems with the NY TImes' coverage of the report in a previous blog posting, that was noticed by some other reporters and analysts) As I previously wrote:

But this is where things get really funny - and so it is too bad that the NY Times decided to leave it all out:

According to the report, the IAEA was in several cases not able to actually provide these same "alleged studies" documents to Iran, because the IAEA didn't even have the documents itself or was not "permitted" to share them with Iran. So, rather than Iran "failing" to provide documentation, it was the IAEA which failed to provide documentation. Iran was nevertheless expected to disprove allegations supposedly contained in documents that the IAEA itself didn't have or was not allowed to show to Iran.

For example, in paragraph 21, the IAEA report states: "Although the Agency had been shown the documents that led it to these conclusions, it was not in possession of the documents and was therefore unfortunately unable to make them available to Iran." Also, in paragraph 16, the IAEA report states: "The Agency received much of this information only in electronic form and was not authorised to provide copies to Iran."

So in other words, the only outstanding issue about Iran's nuclear program are "alleged" studies it carried out in the past on weaponization, which haved never been independently corroborated, but nevertheless Iran is expected to refute allegations from documents that it was not allowed to see, despite the fact that the US had been holding horse-and-pony shows with selected bits of the "evidence" before international audiences since 2005.

I'll end this article here for now, since it has grown quite long and detailed. When the new IAEA report comes out, look for the "alleged studies" claims and see what's up. Remember the back-story to the alleged studies.

The IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program - what's really going on (Part 1 of 2)

The IAEA is set to release another report on Iran's nuclear program. As usual the US and allies are trying to spin the IAEA report to put Iran in a negative light, by emphasizing the so-called 'evidence of what the IAEA itself refers to as Iran's "alleged studies" that Iran "supposedly" carried out about making nuclear weapons which occured up to 2003.

In short, Iran and the IAEA agreed to a list of outstanding issues that had to be resolved in August 2007, and by February 2008 all of the issues had been resolved, except for "alleged studies" that Iran had "supposedly" carried out in 2003 into making nuclear weapons, for which the IAEA had no "credible information" and which the latest US National Intelligence Estimate said had ended in 2003.

Regarding these "alleged studies" note that Iran has never been allowed to see the documents about the "alleged studies" it is supposed to refute, and even the IAEA has not been provided the documents by the US.

Here's the details of what's really going on:

The "Alleged Studies" and the "Laptop of Death"

It is alleged that Iran carried out studies into making nuclear weapons until 2003. These "alleged studies" by Iran (making nuclear war-heads for missiles and manufacturing "green salt" etc/) are based on documents obtained from a laptop computer (some bloggers have taken to jokingly calling it the "Laptop of Death") which the US claims was secretly smuggled out of Iran but which the US has never made available in whole to the IAEA itself for analysis and verification. Since the fabrication potential of this laptop is quite obvious -- remember the faked "yellowcake from Niger" documents? - the US has been trying to strengthen the credibility of the laptop documents by providing the IAEA with supposedly other intelligence from other countries which support the "alleged studies" allegations - but again, none of this other alleged intelligence by the other countries has been made public either.

The US presented some of the alleged contents of the laptop back in 2005 to an increduluous audience of international diplomats. According to the Washington Post:

Nonetheless, doubts about the intelligence persist among some foreign analysts. In part, that is because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop computer beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a longtime contact in Iran. Moreover, this chapter in the confrontation with Iran is infused with the memory of the faulty intelligence [Ed. note: "faulty" or just fabricated?] on Iraq's unconventional arms. In this atmosphere, though few countries are willing to believe Iran's denials about nuclear arms, few are willing to accept the United States' weapons intelligence without question. "I can fabricate that data," a senior European diplomat said of the documents. "It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt."

Iran & IAEA agree on schedule to resolve outstanding issues

So, in August 2007, Iran and the IAEA agreed to a list of issues that had to be resolved about Iran's nuclear program and set out a timetable to address each issue in logical order. This was known as the "Modalities of Resolution of the Outstanding Issues". Two parts of this agreement are crucial to note:

First, regarding the "Alleged Studies," the agreement says that Iran considers the allegations to be a fabrication, but that as a sign of goodwill, Iran will nevertheless address the allegations "upon receiving all related documents."

Second, the agreement specifically says that that aside from the issues identified in the document, there are “no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran’s past nuclear program and activities.”

The US was naturally opposed to this agreement between Iran and the IAEA and vehemently objected to it, accusing Iran of "manipulating" IAEA. Regarding that accusation, IAEA Deputy Director general of safeguards Olli Heinonen (remember that name) underlined the importance of the Iran-IAEA agreement and said:

"All these measures which you see there for resolving our outstanding issues go beyond the requirements of the Additional Protocol...If the answers are not satisfactory, we are making new questions until we are satisfied with the answers and we can conclude technically that the matter is resolved—it is for us to judge when we think we have enough information. Once the matter is resolved, then the file is closed."

The November 2007 IAEA report: 9 issues resolved, documents promised on "Alleged Studies"

Two months later, in November 2007 the IAEA issued one of its regular reports on nuclear activities in Iran. According to this report, the implementation of the Modalities Agreement had previously started, and a series of meetings had already been held where the IAEA had formally presented Iran with a series of questions which Iran had agreed to start answering. According to its Nov 2007 report, the IAEA stated that Iran provided  explanations on 9 outstanding issues listed in the Modalities Agreement, which were either "consistent with" or "not inconsistent with" the IAEA's own findings.

For example, regarding Iran's more advanced P-2 centrifuge (aka the IR-2), which was the subject of many allegations of secret nuclear experiments, the IAEA concluded in the Nov 2007 report:

Based on visits made by Agency inspectors to the P-2 workshop in 2004, examination of the company owner’s contract, progress reports and logbooks, and information available on procurement enquiries, the Agency has concluded that Iran’s statements on the content of the declared P-2 R&D activities are consistent with the Agency’s findings. Environmental samples taken at declared R&D locations and from equipment did not indicate that nuclear material was used in these experiments.

And regarding the "Alleged Studies," the report specifically says in Paragraph 28 that the IAEA was "working on arrangements for sharing with Iran documents provided by third parties related to the alleged studies."

The media, especially the New York Times, tried hard to misrepresent the IAEA eport. The US and European partners opposed to Iran demanded that Iran be sanctioned, regardless.

2007 National Intelligence Estimate: Iran NOT making nukes afterall

The following month, the US issued a new National Intelligence Estimate (representing the consensus view of all 16 US spy agencies) which reported that Iran was not then seeking nuclear weapons, nor would it be capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon until at least 2010. The report concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold -- thus contradicting an assessment from two years earlier that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a nuclear bomb.

NeoCons, Israel bash, spin the 2007 NIE 

The Dec 2007 NIE contradicted a previous NIE of 2005, which claimed with "high confidence" that Iran was in fact making nuclear weapons. There is actually no evidence that Iran was ever making nuclear bombs, in 2003, in 2007, or any other time as noted by the Russians and as I mentioned before  -- but regardless, the spinning of the NIE report started immediately. Naturally, the conclusion that Iran was not making nukes did not settle well with their ambitions to portray Iran as an imminent danger nor did it justify Bush's hyperbolic claims about a coming World War III. Israeli leaders were quite unhappy with the NIE and President Bush went to Israel the following January where he reportedly "all but disowned" his own intelligence agencies' conclusion.

Things even got a little nasty when, for example, an editorial published on December 10th in the Washington Times went as far as to accuse the US intelligence agencies as "whitewashing Iran's nukes" and accused the drafters of the intelligence estimate of playing politics, and John Bolton, the fanatical rightwing former US ambassador to the UN claimed that the estimate constituted an "intelligence putsch" against the Bush administration.

Ever since then, the 2007 NIE has been a target of the far right, which have sought to find various ways to discredit and undermine it. As we shall see in Part 2, the Obama administration turned out to be no exception, as both OBama and Clinton have taken to referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program when in fact the NIE itself said there's no such program. Furthermore, to date the IAEA has not been allowed to actually present the documents on the "alleged studies" to Iran.

Iran and enrichment of uranium

I thought I'd add this article to my previous posts about uranium enrichment in Iran and nuclear energy for Iran:

It is often claimed that since Iran doen't yet have an operational reactor that uses enriched uranium (though it has plans to build such reactors) and the reactor at Bushehr is to be powered by fuel from Russia for the next few years, and Iran could import enriched uranium more cheaply than make it at home, then obvioulsy Iran's development of uranium enrichment technology must be intended for nefarious purposes, ie: to make nuclear weapons.

However, this is total bullshit. For one thing, Iran has yet to really develop its nuclear fuel enrichment program. The enrichment program at Natanz is no where near done. The facility is intended to house 50,000 centrifuges -- and right now only 5000 or so are installed and not all of them are working at full capacity. At current the rate of progress, the full 50,000 centrifuges won't be installed and operational for at least another 10 years or so. So, the argument that Iran's development of an enrichment program must be intended to make nukes since it has no reactors, is based on a false premise.

Secondly, many countries have developed uranium enrichment technology even though they have no reactors at all that use enriched uranium as a fuel source. As the Arms Control Association has noted: 

Lack of strong nuclear expansion, however, has not stopped several countries from expressing interest in developing enrichment capabilities, including Argentina, Australia, Canada, and South Africa. None of these countries has a domestic reactor base that would require developing enrichment capability. Instead, they may be interested in enrichment to keep their future options open and for export purposes. Brazil, which is commissioning a new centrifuge enrichment plant at Resende, will likely produce more low-enriched uranium than is needed for its consumption by 2015. If such decisions were made purely on economic grounds, the thresholds for achieving economies of scale are high but not insurmountable. One estimate is that indigenous centrifuge enrichment becomes cost effective at the capacity level of 1.5 million separative work units, an amount required by 10 1-gigawatt plants. Even then, such an enrichment plant is unlikely to be competitive with larger suppliers such as Urenco.

And why are countries pursuing enrichment even though they may not really need it right now? Because...

Almost all the new and prospective entrants in the enrichment business appear anxious to establish their credentials as having existing technology in place.

Driving this process, in part, is the perception that all countries will soon be divided into uranium enrichment "haves" (suppliers) and "have-nots" (customers) under various proposals to establish multinational nuclear fuel centers and fuel-supply arrangements.

More on the Iran Argentina bombing story

As a follow-up on my previous post, I am posting excerpts of some articles on the allegations of Iranian involvement in the bombing of Jewish targets in Argentina, for the sake of historical accuracy. I have posted much more on the GUlf2000 Project site at Columbia University, however since most of these articles are from pre-1995, they're not as widely available on the internet as they should be.

=========

Argentines Concede Missteps on Bombing
by Calvin Sims

New York Times,  Aug 25, 1994. pg. A.8

Despite announcements two weeks ago that Argentina had evidence linking Iranian diplomats to the bombing of a Jewish community center here on July 18, the Government is still far from knowing who carried out the attack and may never resolve the case, Argentine officials say. The bombing killed 100 people and wounded scores of others.

The officials, who are familiar with the Government's investigation of the bombing and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in recent interviews that the case against the Iranian diplomats was very thin, based mainly on circumstantial evidence provided by an Iranian dissident whose credibility was uncertain.

There is a growing sentiment in the administration of President Carlos Saul Menem that the Government has mishandled the case by publicly endorsing such flimsy evidence and threatening to sever diplomatic ties with Iran and expel its Ambassador based solely on unsubstantiated information, the officials said.

"We have looked pretty silly and naive in recent weeks," a senior Government official said. "It's awful to raise expectations and make people believe things that are later revealed as unproven. That destroys credibility."

While the World Watched

"I was astonished by the way bright, learned officials have acted throughout this whole affair," the official said. "They acted as if they didn't realize the world was watching us and judging us to see how we would handle this."

The Government's chief investigator in the bombing, Judge Juan Jose Galeano, has dropped out of the spotlight and has refused requests for interviews [Cyrus Notes: the Judge was later found guilty of bribing witnesses] after issuing the arrest warrant for four Iranian diplomats whom the dissident identified as being involved in other terrorist activities, including the bombing of the Israeli Embassy here in 1992.

On Tuesday night, the Government said there was not enough evidence to pursue the case. "There is not enough proof," Attorney General Angel Aguero Iturbe said, and suggested that the case be sent back to Judge Galeano for further investigation.

Iran has said that none of the four were in Argentina at the time of the bombing, an assertion Argentina has not disputed. Furthermore, Iranian officials have accused the United States and Israel, whose intelligence agencies helped Argentina in its investigation, of pressing the Menem Government to link the bombing to Iran.

Asked if the Government had acted before all the facts were in, Foreign Minister Guido di Tella said in an interview that he believed that Judge Galeano had acted responsibly in issuing the warrant for the arrest of the Iranians based on the information that was available at the time.

"There was a tremendous public pressure to find the culprits and a lot of overenthusiasm that the first investigations were leading somewhere," Mr. di Tella said. "Now we are more aware that that was just one lead and that there will no doubt be other leads to pursue in the future."

=================================

Doubts raised about witness against Iran
Houston Chronicle, Aug 13, 1994. pg. 21

 

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Doubts grew on Friday about the credibility of Argentina's sole witness against four Iranian officials sought for last month's attack that killed nearly 100 people last month.

The government and the judiciary Friday passed the buck to each other as even Argentina's top Jewish leader said he now doubted the testimony of Manouchehr Motamar.

Motamar's identity and credentials are already disputed by Iran and by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). His testimony, given in Venezuela after the July 18 blast, is the basis for international warrants issued this week for the arrest of four Iranian officials.

Iran Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said in a letter handed to the Argentine envoy that the United States and Israel had publicly tried to prejudice the investigation by Judge Juan Jose Galeano.

""In the space of less than a month, an ordinary shopkeeper has introduced himself as a deputy culture minister, a senior diplomat, a special secretary to the minister of Islamic guidance,'' Velayati wrote.

Ecuador said Friday that Motamar had arrived in the capital Quito on July 25 -- a week after the attack and the day after he testified to Galeano in Venezuela -- and had obtained a visa allowing him to work in Ecuador for up to two years.

""Objectively, you have to wonder what the truth is,'' Ruben Beraja, head of Argentina's main Jewish organization DAIA, said after news of Motamar's appearance in Quito.

The Argentine government, reacting Friday to Motamar's surprise move to Ecuador from Venezuela, said it saw no need for any further contact with him.

The Supreme Court in turn decided, after debating the case two consecutive days, that it needed more information from the foreign ministry about the four Iranians.

AIPAC: Running scared?

Robert Dreyfuss has an article in the upcoming Sept/Oct issue of Mother Jones about challenges facing AIPAC:

For decades, AIPAC-together with Washington's broader Israel lobby, which distributed more than $22 million in compaign contributions during the last election cycle-has had a well earned reputation for getting what it wants. And many expected the same when, during the May conference, thousands of AIPAC foot soldiers fanned across Capitol Hill to talk up the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, a bill designed to throttle Iran's economy by restricting its ability to import gasoline (which it doesn't have much capacity to produce domestically). The legislation is a top priority for aipac, which views Iran's nuclear enrichment push as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

But this time, aipac was in for a surprise. Rep. Howard Berman, a dependable Israel backer who authored the legislation this past spring, put it on ice just weeks after it was introduced. "I have no intention of moving this bill through the legislative process in the near future," declared the California Democrat, who chairs the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"Berman shocked everybody by not moving this bill forward," an official from the Israel lobby told me. "He's essentially put the kibosh on the bill. On his own bill! This is a major, major, major problem."

So what happened? The first explanation is obvious: Like many Democrats, Berman is reluctant to stand in the way of President Obama's foreign policy objectives, including his overture to Iran and his push for US leadership toward an Israeli-Palestinian accord. But Berman's action also signaled a deterioration of aipac's power. It's begun to appear that "aipac is not the 800-pound gorilla everyone says they are," says Dan Fleshier, author of Transforming America's Israel Lobby.. "They may be just a 400-pound gorilla."

On Capitol Hill, a coalition of groups to the left of aipac has been mobilizing Democrats to support Obama's agenda in the Middle East, even if it conflicts with the goals of aipac and Netanyahu. "Members of Congress are looking to support the president, and aipac hasn't moderated itself as much as it should have," says Patrick Disney, acting legislative director at the National Iranian American Council, which is part of the new coalition.

SOURCE: Still the Chosen One?
Robert Dreyfuss. Mother Jones. San Francisco: Sep/Oct 2009. Vol. 34, Iss. 5; pg. 43

Iran's centrifuges said to be "stalled" --- again.

It is like clockwork: every year, the IAEA releases a report about the state of Iran's nuclear program, and particularly about the progress of Iran's centrifuges. And every year, the pundits claim that Iran's centrifuge program has "stalled" or "stagnated" or "falling behind schedule" -- and then they promote all sorts of speculation about the supposedly stalled centrifuge program. It happened in 2008, and it happened in 2007.

WHy is this? I suspect that these reports about how Iran's nuclear program is "stagnating" or "stalled" are intended to undercut the argument that "SInce Iran is progressing in its nuclear program, it unrealistic to demand that they stop enrichment." By suggesting that Iran's nuclear program is failing or falling behind, the opponents to engagement with Iran can instead argue that it is too early to engage and accept Iran as a nuclear country.

Russian ship was sending missles to Iran...says James Bond

You know, I realize that most Americans are geographically illiterate, and Fox News thinks Egypt is located next to Iran...but people, lets get real: Russia and Iran are separated by only a few kilometers in the Caspian Sea, a much shorter and safer route for any such alleged secret shipment of missiles to Iran, rather than going from the Baltic Sea to Algeria to the Red Sea to Persian Gulf. OK? Look, here's a map for your education:

Iran's defense minister on Interpol list

As you know the nominee for Iran's defense minister is on the Interpol list, wanted by Argentina for questioning regarding the alleged Iranian role bombings of Jewish centers in that country.

[I had to gigle when the Israelis so self-righteously claimed that the nomination of the defence minister "proves the nature of the regime" in Iran -- nevermind that pretty much every Israeli prime minster has been a well-known terrorists  and war-criminals responsible not just for the massacre of Palestinian villagers, Egyptian POWs, Lebanese civilians and Palestinian refugees, but also European officials..oh, and a hotel-full of Brits.] 

Anyway, a quick trip down memory lane:

8-24-94: (Reuters) - Argentina is admitting to a major diplomatic blunder, all but withdrawing charges that Iranian officials were involved in an anti-Jewish blast that killed 96 people last month. With the credibility of its sole witness in tatters and no other evidence against Tehran, the government told the Supreme Court Tuesday night there were insufficient elements to press the case. Pressed for answers after a previous attack on the Israeli embassy that killed 30 people two years ago went unsolved, Judge Galeano quickly fingered the Iranian officials in the July 18 bombing...

This isn't the first time that Iranians were placed on the Interpol list for their alleged involvement in the bombing. Previously, Interpol had to remove their names when it became clear that Argentina didn't actually have the evidence to back up their claims of Iranian involvement, and the Interpol warrant had been issued improperly. The whole investigation linking Iran to the bombings totally fell apart when it turned out that the investigating magistrate, Judge Galeano, who had indicted Iranians in the bombing had also paid $400,000 to the Carlos Telledin, the witness that implicated Iran -- a car thief who was apparently trying to implicate Nasrin Mokhrati, his Iranian hairdresser/girlfriend in the bombing.

Then there was the allegation by Mesbahi and other "defectors" which also failed to pan out.

Britain arrested Hade Soleimanpour, Iran's former ambassador to Argentina, based on Argentina's claims that he was involved in the bombing, and held him for extradition to Argentina -- except that the Argentinians were not able to provide the minimal degree of evidence tying him to the bombing necessary to support the extradition order (they were only required to show prima facie evidence, which is legally the lowest standard of proof.) The Brits gave the Argentinians two chances to provide this evidence, and they failed to do so both times, and the British released the Iranian ambassador.

So, why is it that the Argentinian prosecutors (and the Israelis and the Americans) who loudly accuse Iran of the bombing, can't actually present any, you know, evidence?

But then, the US and Pro-Israeli lobby kicked in and started a new campaign of trying to link Iran to the bombings, pressing the Argentinians to reopen the investigation. A new prosecutor was appointed, and of course new Interpol warrants were issued under US and Israeli pressure.

So, here we are.

The old issues of newspapers in the US are chock full of the detritus of half-baked conspiracy theories about Iran that started as speculation & finger-pointing, and were embellished through repetition by the pundits and anonymous allegations from Israel and US officials, but which never quite panned-out factually. These sorts of things  occasionally come back into fashion once in while. The claim about Iranian involvement in the Argentina bombings is just one example; allegations about an Iranian involvment in the Pan Am 103 bombing is yet another one.

For other examples: I remember a NY Times headline which practically screamed that Iran shot down TWA 800 off of Long Island in New York. And lets not forget all those "Iranian hit squads" sent to San Diego to assassinate the wife of the Captain of the USS Vincennes whose van was bombed -- and for which a family acquaintance was ultimately suspected. A particular US Congressman was scaremongering about an alleged Iranian plot to crash an airplane into a nuclear reactor in his state, and others are claiming that the Iranians want to explode a EMP bomb over the US to knock out the US electrical grid (naturally, both stand to gain juicy federal contracts to prevent these alleged Iranian "conspiracies.")

These sorts of accusations are not hard to find, nor are they hard to manufacture. They have a way of becoming "truth" through mere repetition, even in the absence of evidence. 

One should also wonder why Iran would want to harm relations with Argentina, which was a major trading partner with Iran (especially in the nuclear power field) just to blow up a building? Who would stand most to gain from ruining that relationship? The Iranians?

But of course, as long as one can rely on innuendo endlessly repeated and embellished in newspaper columns parroting the officials, who needs facts?

Why enrichment?

José Goldemberg wrote for the Carnegie Endowment back in 2007:

The increasing number of countries that wish to enrich uranium raises nuclear proliferation concerns. To discourage that, a number of proposals have been made to increase assurances of supply in case of market disruptions for political reasons: GNEP by the United States and Putin’s proposal of an international enrichment center in Russia.

A characteristic common to most of these proposals is that they include a conditionality clause that requires participating newcomers in the nuclear energy arena to forego the development of uranium enrichment (and plutonium reprocessing technologies) in exchange for supply assurances.

For this reason, such proposals are seen by some developing countries as a strategy to maintain current suppliers’ monopolistic commercial positions (USEC, EURODIF/AREVA, URENCO and TENEX).

Foregoing uranium enrichment in order to obtain security of supply is not an acceptable option for a number of countries despite the fact that there is a worldwide overcapacity of enrichment of 10,000 seperative work units. There are two reasons for this:

i. Some countries, such as Australia, Canada and Brazil are betting on a strong “renaissance” of nuclear energy in the next few decades and, having large uranium mineral reserves, believe they could be exporters of enrichment services in a growing market. As an example, the head of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission recently justified investments in enrichment by arguing that “Brazil has the sixth largest reserves of uranium (310,000 tons reserves and 800,000 tons resources) and one hopes it could be the second [largest] since only 30% of its territory has been prospected up to 100 meters of depth bellow the surface. Eventually Brazil could export yellow cake.”

ii. In several instances in the past, supply of nuclear fuel was interrupted (to Brazil, in 1974 and to Iran, in 1979) strengthening the decisions of these countries to develop enriching facilities for national security reasons independently of economic considerations. Indigenous uranium enrichment begins to make economic sense only if a country possesses at least 10 gigawatts of installed nuclear capacity (10 large nuclear reactors). However, countries may want to keep enrichment capabilities as a “safety net” against politically motivated threats of fuel supply interruptions.

Paul Kerr's new CRS report on Iran's nuclear program -- still bogus

Paul Kerr has penned another Congressional Research Service Report on Iran's nuclear programme-- and all my criticisms of last year's report still apply to it.

Note for example how he fails to mention that the IAEA has not been permitted to actually present Iran with the documents which allegedly prove that Iran was engaged in a weapons program -- documents that IRan is nevertheless expected to somehow refute.

Note also how he attributes Iran's restart of enrichment to Ahmadinejad's election, when in fact Iran announced plans to withdraw from its voluntary suspension of enrichment months before Ahmadinejad's election, due to the fact that the EU-3 had cheated Iran and violated the Paris Agreement (something Kerr leaves out entirely, among many other facts.)

Note also how he fails to mention that the "additional cooperation" that the IAEA has demanded of Iran goes well beyond Iran's existing legal obligations, as well as the requirements of the Additional Protocol, to which Iran is not a party.

I could go on. Basically, this is a propagand piece.

Dimona in 3-D

One of the visitors to this site who happens to be a Western nuclear expert provided the link to the following YouTube video of a computerized 3-dimensional recreation of Israelis nuclear reactor at Dimona, based on the descriptions and photos exposed by Mordechai Vanunu.

I am of course not a nuclear expert so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information here however I do know that the Israelis stole a batch of enriched uranium from the United States Navy in the 1960s -- and the US looked the other way. Click on the article to read it

 

Oman's Sultan Qabus visited Ahmadinejad

Earlier this month, Sultan Qabus, Oman's ruler, came to Iran and met with Ahmadinejad in a visit that was supposed to boost "historic ties" betweent the two nations.

Oman and Iran certainly do have historic ties, but there's speculation about what was really going on.

An Iranian pro-reform news site, Ayandeh, reported in Persian on August 12th that the Sultan came to Iran, bearing a secret message from the British government which called for the building of trust and removal of tension in its relations with Tehran and announced Britain's readiness to cooperate closely with the Ahmadinejad government.

 

The site claims that David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, has also sent messages to one of our senior Iranian officials in which he has voiced his desire to negotiate with Iran. So far, the Iranian side has not given a positive response to this message according to Ayandeh.

Nor was this some little tete-a-tete over tea and cakes. According to other sources, the Omani delegation consisted of:

- Sayyid Ali bin Hamoud al Busaidi, Minister of the Diwan of Royal Court,

- Gen. Ali bin Majid al Ma'amari, Minister of the Royal Office,

- Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah, Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs,

- Ahmed bin Abdulnabi Macki, Minister of National Economy and Supervisor of the Finance Ministry,

- Abdulaziz bin Mohammed al Rowas, the Sultan's Adviser for Cultural Affairs,

- Lt. Gen. Malik bin Sulaiman al Ma'amari, Inspector General of Police and Customs,

- Dr. Ali bin Mohammed bin Moosa, Minister of Health,

- Maqbool bin Ali Sultan, Minister of Commerce and Industry,

- Dr. Mohammed bin Hamed al Rumhi, Minister of Oil and Gas, 

- Sheikh Yahya bin Abdullah al Fanah al Oraimi, Sultanate's ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Who knows whether any of this is true or not. It could be, for example, an attempt by the reformists to taint Ahmadinejad as secretly working in league with the Evil British Colonialists that the regime has blamed for the recent disturbances in Iran. Or, it could be true. I don't know. I'm hungry. What's for lunch?

Obama's Egypt visit -- what happened?

The Western and Israeli reports of Obama's recent visit to Egypt indicated that Mubarak and Obama agreed on a need to "confront Tehran" but Egytian media have a different take on the matter:

Iran is a key state in the region, and if currently there is disagreement with its regional policy, this disagreement does not justify estrangement with Iran.

More importantly at this point in time, however, is the need for Egypt to make a distinction between its policy towards Iran and its policy towards Israel. Israeli media claim from time to time that there is accord between Cairo and Tel Aviv on the crisis of the Iranian nuclear programme. But such accord is impossible because Egypt rejects the possession of a military nuclear capability not only by Iran, but also Israel.

Egypt also rejects the use of armed force against Iran and considers such action as a new threat to the region that may be more serious than the US invasion of Iraq.

In addition, Egypt does not accept the idea of establishing a US defence umbrella including many Arab states on the pretext of providing regional security against Iran's nuclear programme. This umbrella is only a form of foreign alliances that Egypt has rejected since the 50s of the past century. Egypt has maintained its stand on such alliances to date.

(SOURCE Al-Wafd, Cairo, in Arabic 15 Aug 09/BBC Monitoring/(c) BBC)

Israel says IAEA censoring Iran reports

[UPDATED Aug 28th:

Agency spokesman Marc Vidricaire, though, issued a brief statement on the matter: "Regrettably, time and again unidentified sources feed the media and Member States with misinformation or misinterpretation," Vidricaire said. "This time around, there are articles claiming that the Secretariat is hiding information, and that there are sharp disagreements among staff members involved about the contents of the report. Needless to say, such allegations have no basis in fact." ]

So according to Haarez, the Israelis (or, more precisely, anonymous "senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials ") claim that the IAEA under ElBaradei has been censoring its reports on Iran's nuclear program, by "refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program."

The article goes on to say:

Throughout his term, Israel has accused ElBaradei of not tackling the Iranian nuclear issue with sufficient determination. As the end of his term in December nears, Israeli diplomats are concerned that he will become less responsive and continue to hide the classified report.

Well, there's much more to it than that! The Israelis openly accused ElBaradei of being "pro-Iranian", the US resorted to spying on ElBaradei and even tapped his phone in order to find dirt on him, and Powell demanded that ElBaradei quit his post as the head of the IAEA. Why? All because...

 Inspectors from the IAEA did not find any definitive evidence of weapons-specific work in Iran. ... That conclusion made it impossible for the United States to convince the IAEA board of governors to refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council....Bolton wants ElBaradei out, officials say, and a more compliant director general appointed. Bolton directed a similar operation in 2002 that forced Jose Bustani to resign as head of the organization that oversees implementation of the Chemical Weapons Treaty.

Nevertheless, according to Haaretz, Jerusalem is hoping that Amano, the new head of the IAEA (the "pro-Western" candidate who was backed by the US in a contentious election process at the IAEA) will be more of a puppet than ElBaradei. Amano may to be that in the future, but to date, this is what Amano has had to say about allegations that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons:

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

So,will something be cooked up in the next few month in the "non-official" documents? I assume so. Will it constitute real "evidence" or another Nukie the Nuclear Spaghetti Monster --- that remains to be seen.

Iran long-term economic forecast

Just thought I'd share this long-term economic forecast of Iran, from Business Monitor International. Not sure how reliable BMI has been in the past so I can't vouch for it.

A bit of history: Iraqgate revisited

People may have forgotton Iraqgate, which is now 20 years old, but it is bit of history that needs to be kept alive. A Harpers magazine article summarized it, but note the ending:

In August 1989 the FBI raided and shut down the Atlanta
branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), and the Justice
Department began making a case against Christopher Drogoul, the branch
manager, charging that he had masterminded a scheme to loan $5 billion to
Iraq, illegally and without the knowledge of the BNL headquarters in Rome.
But as the case progressed, evidence emerged--in the form of CIA
documents--indicating that BNL/Rome had known of Drogoul's loans all along.
Further evidence suggested that BNL/Rome's complicity may have been
concealed from the Atlanta prosecutors by the CIA, the Justice Department,
or both.

Why would U.S. officials conceal such a scheme? The U.S. government's stake
in the case turns out to be considerable: about $2 billion of the money
loaned to Iraq was backed by guarantees from the Department of Agriculture,
and now must be paid by American taxpayers. In October 1989, when it began
to be suspected that Iraq was diverting the agricultural credits to arms
purchases, the Department of Agriculture considered withdrawing the loan
guarantees. The consideration was dropped on the advice of the State
Department--after a persuasive phone call from then Secretary of State James
Baker to then Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter. The State
Department's strategy--to use the loan guarantees as a carrot to keep Iraq
in line--proved misguided when, on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait...

Once the Clinton Administration takes office this month, some kind of
prosecution almost certainly will result from all these inquiries.

No, sorry, no prosecutions were undertaken under Clinton, and the whole matter was simply dropped, despite the fact that VICE-PRESIDENT Gore compared Iraqgate with Watergate. 

And that is why you can't expect Obama to prosecute anyone over the Iraq war lies or Abu Ghraib torture scandal either. It will all be dropped down the memory hole.

Blaming Iran for 9/11

I kept a news-clips file starting on 9/11/2001 keeping track of the various theories promoted by the Israelis and NeoCons linking Iran and Iraq to the Sept 11 WTC attacks. Note how they either directly implicated Iran, or suggested that Iran should be held accountable anyway regardless of whether it was proven to have a role in the attacks or not, and urged using the 911 attacks as a justification for regime change in Iran.

We do not yet know who did this. We do know the
identity of those who have countenanced and even
encouraged the debased notion that terrorism is an
appropriate response to alleged oppression. One way or
another, they are complicit in yesterday's tragedy.
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya have proudly
defended the political uses of terrorism. Any country
that has excused, justified or given shelter to
terrorists must share the blame for what happened
yesterday

American Jewish Congress Statement on Yesterday's
Terrorist Attacks     
09/12/2001 
PR Newswire 
=====================================================
For many years, members of these groups have waged
total war, in different forms and on diverse levels,
against the world's democracies and leading powers.
They have gathered weapons, raised funds and recruited
suicide bombers, ready to die and kill many others in
the name of various ideologies. Many receive direct
assistance and protection from governments around the
world notably, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and the
Palestinian Authority. The Osama Bin-Laden group,
which is considered the most likely perpetrator of the
atrocities in New York and Washington, is aided and
abetted by a number of different partners.

Opinion 
Barbarians at the gate 
GERALD M. STEINBERG  
09/12/2001 
The Jerusalem Post 
============================================================

The fact that no organization took responsibility for
the attacks is irrelevant, Netanyahu said, because the
root cause of the attacks are "terrorist states like
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian entity"
that want to "devour the West."

"For them, our free civilization is satanic - an
abomination that should be wiped off the face of the
earth," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu: World must join to crush terror

GIL HOFFMAN
09/12/2001 The Jerusalem Post


===========================================================
Bin Laden is known to have connections with Iranian
intelligence operatives. But a more likely state
sponsor is Iraq. Laurie Mylroie, publisher of Iraq
News, makes a persuasive case that Saddam Hussein was
behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and
subsequent failed plots to blow up the United Nations
and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

Whether or not any Muslim states participated actively
in the plot, several clearly participated passively by
providing the plotters with safe havens. The Taliban
in Afghanistan shelters bin Laden. Syria, Libya, Iraq,
Iran and the Palestinian Authority offer shelter to
terrorists.

 

EDITORIAL 
ENOUGH BRAVE WORDS TERRORISTS HAVE BEEN WAGING WAR.
IT'S TIME TO RESPOND IN KIND 

09/12/2001 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 

===================================================
Some experts speculated that the enormity of the plot
could even point to the involvement of a hostile
government, such as Iraq or Iran.

Terrorists Destroy World Trade Center, Hit Pentagon in
Raid With Hijacked Jets

By DavidS. Cloud and Neil King 9/12/2001 The Wall Street Journal

==============================================================

The diplomatic cover, intelligence data and financial
resources needed to conduct this war against the
United States can only be offered by a regime whose
track record against U.S. interests is proven, and
Iraq comes immediately to mind. Iran's anti-American
and anti-Israeli policies, although less likely, could
also be responsible.

Commentary Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold 
R. JAMES WOOLSEY; MANSOOR IJAZ 
R. James Woolsey, an attorney in Washington, was
director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993
to 1995. Mansoor Ijaz, an American Muslim of Pakistani
origin, negotiated Sudan's counterterrorism offer to
the United States in 1997 
 
09/12/2001 
Los Angeles Times 
==================================================================

These are the shock troops of the enemy. And the enemy
has many branches. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad in Israel, the Osama bin Laden
organization headquartered in Afghanistan, and various
Arab "liberation fronts" based in Damascus. And then
there are the governments: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya
among them. Which one was responsible? We will find
out soon enough.
Editorial 

To War, Not to Court 
Charles Krauthammer  

09/12/2001 
The Washington Post 
=======================================================

In his evening television address from the Oval
Office, the president said, "We will make no
distinction between the terrorists who committed these
acts and those who harbor them." Does "those who
harbor" include such nations as Syria, Libya, Iran and
Afghanistan? Will that strike the American people --
or the world -- as just? Or will it show us getting
mad because we can't get even?
Will Bush rise to the challenges? 
Chris Matthews 

 
09/12/2001 
The San Francisco Chronicle 

===============================================================
Mike Ackerman, a former CIA operations officer now
with the Ackerman Group, an international security
consultant, in Miami, Fla., suggested governments
hostile to the United States, such as Iran and Iraq,
may have been responsible.

"You have to assume that some of the hijackers had air
force experience, were pilots with commercial or
military aviation experience," said Ackerman.

"If that's the case then the suggestion is that there
was a state hand in this. The only two countries that
come to mind would be Iran and Iraq. If there's a
state hand in it they would have taken pains to
disguise it."

Experts: Too early to say who carried out attacks, but
state sponsorship is possible 
By DONNA ABU-NASR 
Associated Press Writer 
 
09/11/2001 
Associated Press Newswires 
=================================================================
[Presenter] I would like to ask Mr Sharansky a
question. Do the Israeli special services have any
information - maybe Mr Sharansky can confirm if the
Israeli special services have reliable information
confirming that Islamic radicals were involved in
this?

[Omitted: correspondent repeats question to Sharansky]


[Sharansky] At this moment, of course there are no
such reports. But we know that major structures,
backed by [Usamah] Bin Laden and countries like Iran
and Syria, and of course the leading Palestinian
organizations, plan their actions on a global scale,
and today's events have shown this to be the case.

Israel's Sharansky points to Bin Laden, Iran, Syria,
on USA terror strikes

09/11/2001 BBC Monitoring
Source: NTV International, Moscow
=============================================

"Bin Laden is one of the possibilities, also Iran or
(the guerrilla group) Hizbollah," Shabtai Shavit who
headed Israel's Mossad intelligence agency from 1989
to 1996 told Reuters. ...Schweitzer said the massive
scale of the attacks would have required the backing
of a state and the only question that remained was
which one. He suggested Iran and Iraq as the likeliest
possibilities.

Israeli experts point at bin Laden on U.S. attack.
By Megan Goldin
09/11/2001 Reuters English News Service

======================================================

If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the
enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that
sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be
defeated. As Israel learned in Lebanon, it was
impossible to defeat Hizbullah while holding that
organization's Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese sponsors
were effectively immune from attack. ... The concept
of a war against terrorism is meaningless without the
goal of removing terrorist regimes. The exact
combination of diplomatic, economic, and military
tools to be deployed toward this goal is a legitimate
matter of debate. But a war against terrorism that
avoids the issue of regime change in countries such as
Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan cannot be won, because it
has not even really been joined.
     
Opinion 
Defining the enemy 
o9/13/2001 
The Jerusalem Post 

 

=========================================

The terrorists who do the deeds cannot prosper without
the infrastructure, administration and financial
support of certain states. The names of these rogues
are known to the US and have been documented. They are
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Sudan and Syria.
They might be less formidable in pure military
strength than Japan under Hideki Tojo and Germany
under Adolf Hitler, but in a stroke, their agents,
accomplices, proteges or proxies have killed more
American civilians on American soil than died in all
of World War II.

Give war a chance - the only way to root out
terrorists 
David Perlmutter 09/13/2001 
South China Morning Post 

More on the alleged Iran election "fraud"

As a follow-up on my previous post listing the claims and counterclaims of election fraud in Iran --

Reza Esfandiari sent me a report analyzing the allegations of fraud in the Iran elections. Conclusion:

Statistical studies have proved inexact and inconclusive as far as detecting any real evidence of fraudulent manipulation. If cheating did occur, it must have been localized and generally restricted to remote parts of the country where the population levels would not have been significant enough to sway the final outcome –We thus conclude that the 10th Iranian presidential election is a genuine reflection of the will of the Iranian people and that Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the duly elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Read their full report here.(pdf)

Reza also turned me onto Thomas Lotze's analysis of the statistical claims about fraud in Iran here.

As a side note, I should mention that many people, when confronted with this evidence of an absence of election fraud in Iran, simply then change the subject and say, well, the point is that the regime is illegitimate and should be toppled.

Well, you're entitled to your opinions about the regime, but not about the facts, and the fact is that there is no real evidence of election fraud in Iran.

John Barry on Iran's "chutzpah" at the UN

John Barry has written an blog entry/article(?) for Newsweek about how Iran is supposedly has shown "chutzpah" in trying to "short circuit" or make an "end-run" around the IAEA by seeking a UN Resolution banning attacks on nuclear facilities. In this blog entry/article, John Barry claims that since the Geneva Conventions already prohibit attacks on non-military nuclear sites and "presumably" related facilities, then obviously the only reason Iran has to fear is due to the fact that Iran's nuclear facilities must be for a military purpose.

As if we've been so scrupulous in observing the Geneva Conventions that any other prohibition is totally unnecessary. Need I remind John Barry that the same Conventions prohibited bombing water treatment and other totally civilian facilities -- but Iraq's water treatment facilities in addition to Iraq's electrical grid was quite specifically targetted by the US with the intent of making the lives of Iraqi citizens so miserable that they would hopefully overthrow Saddam themselves (but which instead contributed to the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children from the sanctions, as a result of improper sanitation and lack of access to clearn drinking water --something then Secretary of State Albright said was "worth it".)

Barry nevertheless admits that Iran is not the only country seeking such a ban since efforts by other countries have been "stymied for years in the U.N. Committee on Disarmament in Geneva." Perhaps they're all trying to make nukes too, eh, Barry? Could it be that Iran isn't so much "short circuiting" the IAEA as it is seeking a way around being continuously "stymied"? In fact many countries support Iran's position -- the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference specifically adopted this conclusion:

The Conference considers that attacks or threats of attack on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes jeopardize nuclear safety, have dangerous political, economic and environmental implications and raise serious concerns regarding the application of international law on the use of force in such cases, which could warrant appropriate action in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Barry claims -- falsely -- that these effort by other countries to ban attacks of nuclear facilities were stymied because the nations seeking the ban refuse "reasonable" Western demands to ban the production of radiological weapons, and to subject their nuclear facilities to IAEA inspections. Well, John Barry, I have some news for you. All of the members of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, including Iran (but not India) have nuclear facilities which are already under IAEA safeguards and they (along with Iran) have already signed a treaty banning the production of "radiological" weapons which is called the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So your "reasonable Western demands" turn out to be bullshit, don't they?

 And after more than 7 years of intensive inspections by the IAEA, the IAEA has said repeatedly that there's no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Indeed, Amano, the incoming head of the IAEA and the same Japanese nuclear expert who you claim has "stronger views on the need to stop proliferation" than his predecessor ElBaradei, had this to say about allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons programs:

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Pwned!

Spying in the UAE

The Financial Times reports on an incident in which spying software was found on Blackberry mobile phones in the United Arab Emirates:

In the UAE incident, a consumer investigating why his BlackBerry battery kept draining looked into the code that state telecoms operator Etisalat had just recommended for installation. He turned up a file called Interceptor, which other researchers identified as a tool for eavesdropping. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion disavowed the program, which it said originated with SS8...

SS8 is based in Silicon Valley, backed by top-tier venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and largely serves law enforcement agencies.

The company, more than 15 years old, is a solid part of a growing industrial-surveillance complex that weaves together innovation in monitoring, new government cyber-security initiatives and rapid expansion in connectivity.

Which raises the questions of who was behing this, why the UAE was targetted for this operation, and what sort of information was it supposed to glean from the Blackberry users there?

Iran color revolution?

Monthly Review compares the Ukranian and Iranian "color revolutions", both involving allegations of vote-rigging but one successful and one not .... depending on how you define success:

Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians in May told Gallup they disapprove of the job performance of their country's leadership, up from 75% in 2008 and 73% in 2007.  The 4% of Ukrainians who approve is not only the lowest rating Gallup has ever measured in former Soviet countries, but also the lowest in the world.

The fiscal year 2009 funding for the "democracy-promotion" programs targeting Iran is $65 million:

"The $65 million for Iran is equal to roughly one-third of the FY 2009 funding allocated for the entire sub-Saharan African region, excluding Sudan" (David Price, "Global Democracy Promotion: Seven Lessons for the New Administration," The Washington Quarterly, January 2009).

In fact most of the "color revolutions" -- modelled on the US incitement in Serbia, as in the Ukraine -- have turned to pooh. Remember Georgia's "Rose Revolution" led to the overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze and replacing him with Mikhail Saakashvili? Here's the latest news...

An influential group of Georgian opposition leaders has mounted a blistering political campaign against U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing his government of running an autocratic regime that tramples human rights and stifles democracy.

Great.

Persian Fairy Tales dot com -- my newest project

I just started a project called PersianFairyTales.com. You can tell what it is all about by the name. I remember some of the fairy tales I was told as a child but not many. I am hoping that people will contribute their own stories. See you there!

ElBaradei: coulda, woulda, shoulda

Former IAEA director ElBaradei engages in some post-war mea culpa for the IAEA's role in selling the "WMDs in Iraq" farce of a justification for the IRaq war:

The most dissatisfying moment of my life, of course, was when the Iraq war was launched. That hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives on the basis of fiction, not facts, makes me shudder. ....I should probably, before the Iraq war, have screamed and howled harder and louder to prevent people from misusing the information that was made available by us.

Yes you "probably" should have done so. Indee, "probably" so.

But the most interesting part of his interview is this part:

QUESTION: How do you guarantee that a country is using nuclear power properly?

ELBARADEI: We can provide as much guarantee as we have the legal authority, the resources and the technology to do so. If the international community wants to have ironclad inspection guarantees, they better give us the wherewithal.

Why is this interesting? Because ElBaradei seems to have no problem demanding Iran to do MORE than it is legally required by allowing "transparency" inspections that, according to the IAEA itself, "go well beyond" not only Iran's existing safeguard, but also beyond the Additional Protocol which is not binding on Iran.

Iran gasoline sanctions -- wonderful plan!

Despite having about 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves and being the fourth-largest crude-oil exporter, Iran is the second biggest gasoline importer in the world after the United States, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), leading some to believe that sanctions on Iran’s gas imports will cause the Iranians to give up their perfectly legal and IAEA-monitored nuclear energy program.

Some bloggers have already voiced criticism of the plan to sanction gasoline sales to Iran for a variety of reasons, ie: There will also be so much smuggling that no sanctions will work. But the Iranians haven’t been sitting around, doing nothing in the meantime, and there are several additional reasons why gas sanctions won’t work:

First of all, Iran’s nuclear program is massively popular amongst Iranians, of any political persuasion. Trying to impose sanctions in order to force them to give up their enrichment program will only unite them further. People who are not familiar with Iran’s history may not realize that Iran has often been at the receiving end of such threats and ultimatums by foreign powers, which have stirred the ire of the patriotic Iranians. There’s a deep historical well of anti-colonialist resentment against foreign powers trying to dictate terms to Iran using boycotts and sanctions (not the least of which was the British-led international boycott of oil purchases from Iran during Mossadegh's term, for example.) To this day, the Iranians consider the governments who gave-in to such threats to be traitors.

And, as I previously mentioned, any such sanctions on Iran’s energy imports will only bolster the governments’ argument in favor of domestic production of nuclear reactor fuel, by proving that promises of “guaranteed” sales of reactor fuel to Iran are in fact subject to the whims of the great powers who may at any time engage in energy blackmail against Iran by cutting off/reducing the sale of reactor fuel for their own reasons.

Furthermore, considering the hugely subsidized cost of gas in Iran, and the government efforts to cut the excessive consumption of gas, any sort of gasoline sanctions would be a gift to the Iranian government. Gas prices in Iran are heavily subsidized, and sold below the market price at around 42 cents per gallon, which has encouraged waste, excess consumption, and smuggling to neighboring countries. An increase in vehicle sales in recent years has also contributed to the problem (Iran manufactures over a million cars a year now.) There were riots back in 2007 when Iran tried to address the gasoline over-consumption by imposing rationing, but now the sanctions provide a great opportunity for them to do so again, whilst shifting the political fallout and blame onto the foreign-imposed sanctions.

The Iranians have addressed the consumption side of the equation in other ways. Iran has significantly invested in making hybrid or natural gas-powered cars. CNG-powered car production in Iran jumped from 20,000 to over 400,000 in 2008. They expect 600,000 CNG-powered cars to be made in 2009. Even T. Boone Pickens grudgingly acknowledged Iran’s success:

"Iranians have already switched everything to natural gas. Why? Because they have an abundance of natural gas. It's cheaper, it's cleaner, and it's theirs. We have the same dynamics going for us, and we're sitting here not doing it. You keep saying, 'Well if it's so good, why aren't we doing it?' And I'm saying we haven't had the leadership to promote it."

And finally, while it is true that Iranian refineries were unable to keep pace with domestic demand, Iran has also been busy increasing its refining capability quite significantly, as reported by IAGS (pdf). So, should Iran give up its uranium fuel production capabilities in exchange for being “allowed” to import gasoline? I’ll leave the cost-benefit analysis to the economists and the nation’s strategic security planners. But as a side note, here’s an interesting factoid:

A tiny pellet of uranium held in the palm of your hand weighs about seven grams, a little more than a U.S. quarter. Get this: It can generate as much energy as 147 gallons of oil, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 1,780 pounds of coal. - Nuclear Renaissance, Forbes.com Nov 14 2007

Sounds like a bad bargain to me.

Mercenary "Christian" Crusaders in Iraq

According to an article in The Nation, the head of the mercenary company used by the United States in Iraq is accused by former Blackwater employees of being on a "Christian" crusade to kill as many Iraqis as he could:

The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

More details here

Truth-squadding Albright's "Misconceptions about Iran’s Nuclear Program"

David Albright of ISIS has published a post entitled "Misconceptions about Iran’s Nuclear Program" which mainly consists of several half-truths and outright falsehoods. I thought it would be fun to take them apart.  [I, and others including Dr Sahimi and Scott Ritters, have written about David Albright before]

But before we get started, lets remember what an IAEA official recently said about these allegations that Iran has a nuclear weapons program:

"Some people do not want to see the Iran issue resolved because that would contradict their hidden agendas, he said, adding that "people should have learned from their mistakes in the past, when all the hype over alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq turned out to be just that -- hype...

"If the facts are at odds with the policy objectives of some people who are keen to impose further sanctions on Iran, that's too bad," the official added..."

Below, I have produced a shortened version of each of Albrights claimed "misconceptions" in Italics, followed by my own comments on it. (read Albrights full claims on his site as I don't have the room to reproduce them in full here while keeping this post to a managable length.)

ALBRIGHT:

Misconception 1. Iran’s IAEA safeguards violations were minor breaches and fully in the past
Iran’s safeguards violations have been detailed in numerous IAEA reports, which can be found here, starting in June 2003.  The November 2003 report states that “based on all information currently available to the Agency, it is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material has been processed and stored….” Iran’s development of its enrichment capability took place over 18 years and in secrecy.  This places Iran’s actions outside the category of “minor.”

MY COMMENTS: First of all, on the supposed "secrecy" of Iran's enrichment program, go read my post on Iran's not-so-hidden enrichment program, and note how Iran announced plans to develop the program on national radio in the early 1980s, and how IAEA inspectors were invited to visit Iran's uranium mines in the 1990s, long before the dramatic exposure of Iran's supposed "secret" enrichment program in 2002.

Here, Albright forgets to mention several facts -- for example, that even in the November 2003 IAEA report that he repeatedly cites, the IAEA itself said that that the unreported activities by Iran had no relation to a weapons program, and later, that all of Iran's nuclear material had been accounted for, and none had been diverted to make weapons:

ElBaradei confirmed in Paragraph 52 of the November 2003 IAEA report that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme." And again, after extensive inspections, ElBaradei wrote Paragraph 112 of the November 2004 IAEA report that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities."

This statement by the IAEA is very significant, legally, because IT MEANS THAT IRAN DID NOT VIOLATE THE NPT.

Safeguards violations are often (deliberately) confused with violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, though they are separate things. As Michael Spies of the Lawyer's Committee on Nuclear Policy has written:

"The conclusion that no diversion has occurred certifies that the state in question is in compliance with its undertaking, under its safeguards agreement and Article III of the NPT, to not divert material to non-peaceful purposes. In the case of Iran, the IAEA was able to conclude in its November 2004 report that that all declared nuclear materials had been accounted for and therefore none had been diverted to military purposes. The IAEA reached this same conclusion in September 2005."

And while Albright keeps mentioning  the November 2003 report by the IAEA, he conveniently forgets to mention the later Sept 2008 report, by which time Iran had cleared up all the allegations against it to the IAEA's satisfaction, with no evidence of any nuclear weapons program found, and had Iran therefore been vindicated. In fact, IAEA Director ElBaradei specifically declared that all the remaining issues had been cleared up:

"We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran´s enrichment programme" with the exception of a single issue, "and that is the alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the past."

(more on what the IAEA itself calls "alleged studies" which were "supposedly conducted" by Iran later)

Now we come to Albright's second alleged "misconception" over Iran's nuclear program. which actually consists of two parts, and I'm going to take them apart in great detail so hang in there with me:

Misconception 2. All of Iran’s nuclear facilities are under safeguards or monitoring, or alternatively the IAEA has found no evidence that Iran has any secret nuclear facilities
This is not the case.  In fact, many key nuclear activities and facilities are not under any type of IAEA monitoring.  This lack of Iranian transparency poses one of the most difficult challenges to determining whether Iran has undeclared nuclear activities and materials and is conducting nuclear weapons work...

 The [Additional] Protocol aimed to significantly strengthen the IAEA’s ability to detect undeclared nuclear materials and facilities, and ensure that a state’s declaration is complete.  Although Iran initially agreed to allow this agreement in 2003, it then decided to no longer do so in 2006.  Since then, the IAEA has reported that it is unable to determine if Iran has undeclared nuclear materials or activities.  In the past, the IAEA has found evidence of secret nuclear sites.  Now, the IAEA is limited in its ability to look for any such sites because of the weakened inspections and Iran’s interpretation of its obligations to the IAEA under that agreement...

Under INFCIRC/153, the IAEA does not safeguard or inspect several Iranian nuclear facilities and activities, in particular those involved in the research, development, and manufacture of gas centrifuges. Currently, the IAEA does not know the location of many of these sites.  The IAEA also does not inspect the Arak heavy water production facility, which is outside the scope of inspections under INFCIRC/153...

As a general matter, a more accurate title for this alleged "misconception" should be: "Iran is fully abiding by its safeguards agreement, and we don't like that", because if you notice, in every paragraph his real complaint is of the alleged "inadequacy" of the safeguards agreement that Iran has, according to Albright, "strictly interpretted" -- meaning "abided by." In short, Iran has permitted all the inspections the IAEA legally requires of Iran in accordance with the applicable safeguards agreement, and no evidence of any weapons program has been found, but Albright is not happy anyway because he thinks the safeguards agreements applicable to Iran (which is identical to the safeguards originally applicable to all the NPT signatories) is not tough enough. But whether Albright likes it or not, not only has Iran abided by its safeguards agreement and done everything it is required to do by that agreement. In the past, Iran had even allowed more inspections than what the safeguards agreement legally requires, with no evidence of any nuclear weapons program found there -- which is precisely why the IAEA publicly complained about the inadequacy of US intelligence on Iran's supposed "secret" nuclear sites. According to the LA Times:

Despite growing international concern about Iran's nuclear program and its regional ambitions, most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate, and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran, diplomats here said.

More specifically, as I said, this "second misconception" by Albright actually consists of two parts:

First-part of the alleged misconception:  Albright claims that all of Iran's nuclear sites are not under IAEA safeguards, because non-nuclear sites, such as the facilities in which the centrifuges used in Iran's enrichment program are designed and made, are not inspected by the IAEA. That is true -- these facilities are in fact not inspected by the IAEA. But Albright doesn't clearly say why: not because they are "secret" as Albright claims, but because they simply fall outside of the scope of the IAEA's inspection authority as specificed by Iran's safeguards agreement, since they don't contain any nuclear material to be inspected in the first place. The centrifuges are used to enrich uranium, but they don't contain any nuclear material themselves when they are designed and built, and therefore they are not subject to the IAEA's inspection authority.  By referring to these centrifuge design and manufacture sites as "secret" sites, Albright implies that Iran's refusal to disclose their location is some sort of breach of Iran's obligations to the IAEA, which is simply not true.

So in short, Iran has allowed all the inspections of sites it is REQUIRED to allow (and had in the past allowed inspections beyond its legal requirements as a good faith gesture only to be cheated) but is no longer allowing inspections BEYOND its legal obligations in places such as centrifuge design/manufacture facilities. Darn those Iranians for doing what they're supposed to do! 

Here, you may be wondering "So why won't Iran 'voluntarily' allow the inspections of the centrifuge design/manufacturing facilities, even if it is not required to do so, just to shut this guy up?" Well, first because whenever Iran allowed inspections beyond its legal requirements, at places such as Parchin, where no evidence of nuclear weapons program were found (despite Albright's baseless scaremongering), the claims against Iran continued without change. Second, legally, because Iran would be agreeing to being treated as a defacto second-class member of the NPT which is required to make concessions that are not part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty itself, and which no other country is required to do. Third, Albright himself has explained a more practical reason for why the US is trying to get Iran to disclose the locations of the centifuge manufacturing facilities, and why Iran would refuse: because they are potential bombing targets, and disclosing their locations makes an attack on Iran more likely:

Considering the modular, replicable nature of centrifuge plants, we conclude that an attack on Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely to significantly degrade Iran’s ability to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.

Right now, as long as Iran can design and manufacture centrifuges, then any bombing campaign against Iran would be useless since Iran could always manufacture replacement centrifuges and then continue to operate its nuclear program -- which explains why the US is pushing Iran to disclose their location of the centrifuge design/manufacture sites to IAEA inspectors, even though they fall outside of the IAEA inspection authority. THe US will then get the targetting info from the inspectors, so these facilities too could be bombed. Naturally, the Iranians object to this.

So, again, contrary to Albright's alleged "misconceptions," the fact remains that Iran is doing everything it is legally required to do in accordance with its legal obligations to the IAEA (and in the fact it had even allowed more inspections than it was legally required - see below.) 

Second-part of the alleged misconception: Albright also complains that Iran has not agreed to the Additional Protocol, which implements more stringent inspections process. He says:

"Although Iran initially agreed to allow this agreement in 2003, it then decided to no longer do so in 2006"

He than claims that as a result,

"IAEA has reported that it is unable to determine if Iran has undeclared nuclear materials or activities."

Well, several things are missing from Albright's decription. First of all, as Albright states himself, Iran DID voluntarily implement the Additional Protocol for more than 2 years  (even though it was not required to do so), and was subject to the more stringent inspections --- and no weapons program was found. A confidential "update brief" prepared by IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen specifically stated:

"Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency, and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in force, including by providing in a timely manner the requisite declarations and access to locations."

Note that Albright also claims that Iran mysteriously "decided to no longer do so in 2006" -- without mentioning the reason WHY in Iran backed out of implementing the Additional Protocol: because it was made clear to Iran that even if Iran abides by the Additional Protocol, the US would still insist that Iran give up enrichment. I have written about this before (how the EU-3, pushed  by the US, tried to cheat Iran under the Paris Agreement by making an offer to Iran that analysts described as an "empty box in pretty wrapping".) So in short, it was proven that even if Iran does abide by the Additional Protocol, the demands on Iran would not change -- because the US does not want Iran to have any enrichment capability, whether subject to the Additional Protocol or not. David Albright knows this well enough; he knows perfectly well that the Additional Protocol is simply a convenient excuse.

Secondly, Albright leaves out that Iran has nevertheless offered to not only ratify and implement the Additional Protocol permanently, but to even impose additional restrictions on its nuclear program well in excess of any legal obligation, to address even hypothetical concerns that the program could be secretly used to make bombs (such as by opening the program to multinational participation) as long as Iran's right to enrich uranium is recognized -- and these offers by Iran have been simply ignored, because ultimately, the real goal of the US is to deprive Iran of any enrichment capability entirely (even if perfectly legal and overt) and not just to ensure that Iran does not make nuclear weapons, thus monopolizing nuclear fuel production in the hands of a few nations. That is the true agenda behind all these claims about "iranian nuclear weapons" as I have written before, and is a long-simmering conflict between developing and developed nations that the US media insists on ignoring.

Third, Iran's refusal to abide by the Additional Protocol is hardly unique in the world. Many other countries have not agreed to the Additional Protocol either. Examples include Argentina and Brazil, both of which have recently developed uranium enrichment technology. Another more egregious example is Egypt, which unlike Iran has flatly refused to sign the Additional Protocol, despite the fact that Egypt was caught violating its safeguards agreement and traces of high-enriched, bomb-grade nuclear material has been discovered there in the past and also quite recently.

Fourth, while it is true that the IAEA  has reported that it is "unable to determine if Iran has undeclared nuclear materials or activities", that's simply because the IAEA does not technically certify the absence of undeclared activities for for ANY country unless they  have signed and ratified the Additional Protocol - but failure to do so is no reason to suspect them of secretly building nukes as Albright implies. The Lawyer's Committee non Nuclear Policy has made this clear:

For some it is tempting to declare, based on the inability of the IAEA to presently draw a conclusion on the absence of nuclear activities, that Iran continues to operate concealed facilities and that any such facilities must be for a military program. But the IAEA has cautioned that the lack of a conclusion does not imply suspicion of undeclared nuclear materials and activities, as the matter is frequently spun in the media.

Furthermore, in the particular case of Iran, while the IAEA has said that it cannot technically certify the absence of "undeclared activities" in Iran, the IAEA has also plainly stated that it has no evidence of any such undeclared activities there either.  In reponse to the issuance of the 2007 NIE, ElBaradei specifically stated:

[A]lthough Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.

In fact, according to the IAEA's own Annual Safeguards Implementation Report of 2004, of the 61 states where both the NPT safeguards and the Additional protocol are implemented, the IAEA has certified the absence of undeclared nuclear activity for only 21 countries, leaving Iran in the same category as 40 other countries including Canada, the Czech Republic, and South Africa. Note especially the last sentence:

"With regard to 21 States with both CSAs [Comprehensive Safeguard Agreements] and AP [Additional Protocol] in force or otherwise applied, the Agency concluded that all nuclear material in those States remained in peaceful nuclear activities. For 40 other such States, the Agency had not yet completed the necessary evaluations, and could therefore only draw the conclusion that the nuclear material placed under safeguards remained in peaceful nuclear activities."

Finally, as for claims that Iran lacks "transparency" -- you will read in many places that the ElBaradei had complained of the "lack of transparency" by Iran in resolving the dispute over its nuclear program. Iran's "lack of transparency" is made to sound as if Iran was hiding something and not living up to its obligations. In fact, as we have seen above, Iran has "strictly interpretted" and abided by its safeguards obligation even according to Albright, and on occasion even exceeded its obligations by allowing more inspections than legally required. So what is all this about a "lack of transparency" in Iran? You have to understand the definition of "transparency" -- it means that Iran is demanded to do more than its existing legal obligations under its existing safeguards agreement, and even more than what the Additional Protocol would legally require of Iran if Iran had signed and ratified the agreement. The Feb 2006 IAEA report defined what it meant by "transparency" in paragraph 54:

Without full transparency that extends beyond the formal legal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol — transparency that could only be achieved through Iran’s active cooperation — the Agency’s ability to reconstruct the history of Iran’s past programme ...

Naturally, the Iranians object to such demands for "transparency" which have no legal basis. Nothing in the IAEA Statute, the Non-Proliferation Treaty or even customary international law require Iran to go beyond its existing safeguards and then beyond even the Additional Protocol (which is not binding on Iran anyway.) The IAEA has no legal authority to demand such "transparency". Nor is there any reason to assume that if Iran does show such "transparency" that the matter would be resolved, because the US has made it clear that it would not tolerate ANY enrichment in Iran at all, regardless of how transparent it may be. Remember, Iran had temporarily implemented these transparency measures in the past but to no avail.

Next we come to Albright's third alleged "misconception" about Iran's nuclear program, which is about the heavy water reactor that Iran is building in Arak:

Misconception 3. Iran is fully in compliance with its safeguards obligations
Even under the relatively minimal requirements agreed under INFCIRC/153 and its implementing agreements, Iran has refused multiple IAEA requests to verify design information for the Arak heavy water reactor and its associated facilities currently under construction.  The IAEA has stated that this refusal is inconsistent with its obligations under INFCIRC/153.

The IAEA also takes issue with Iran’s decision to stop providing information about new nuclear facilities when it makes a decision to construct them.  Iran is insisting on adhering to a long outdated version of its safeguards undertakings by agreeing to provide such information only 180 days before the introduction of nuclear material into the facility...

This dispute is significant because Iran has built secret nuclear sites, including the Natanz gas centrifuge complex, exploiting this outdated arrangement.  Iran confirmed its existence in early 2003 only after it was exposed publicly by groups such as ISIS. 

There is an ongoing dispute between Iran and the IAEA over one issue: whether Iran is required to give the IAEA the design information on the Arak reactor now, or later. That's all. Dr Sahimi has explained the details behind this dispute:

The IAEA also stated that Iran did not allow it to visit and inspect Iran's under-construction research reactor in Arak. But, such visits are covered by the modified text of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part, Code 3.1, of the Safeguards Agreement. Iran had agreed to the modified text, part of which states that Iran must allow inspection of the under-construction sites. However, because the EU3 reneged on its promises, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text in February 2006, and went back to its original Safeguards Agreement, signed in 1974. The original Subsidiary Arrangements state that only 180 days prior to the introduction of any nuclear material into a nuclear facility does Iran have the obligation to allow visits to and inspection of the facility. Thus, once again, Iran has no legal obligations towards the [International Atomic Energy] Agency regarding the Arak reactor.

Nevertheless, David Albright has seized on this single dispute in order to characterize Iran as a proliferation threat -- conveniently forgetting to mention some more pertinent facts:

First, despite the ongoing dispute between Iran and the IAEA over this issue, the yet-unbuilt reactor at Arak has already been inspected twice by IAEA inspectors. It is not a secret site, and regardless of the current dispute between Iran and the IAEA, the reactor will operate under IAEA safeguards once nuclear material is introduced into the site and it becomes operational. Therefore it cannot be used to make bombs.

Second, while Albright characterizes Iran as having "exploited" an "outdated" safeguards agreement by not disclosing the Natanz facility, the fact remains that Iran acted in accordance with the legal requirements of its existing safeguards. Iran was not obligated under the terms of its safeguards to formally disclose the existence of the its enrichment facilities to the IAEA until 180 days prior to the introduction of nuclear material in the facilities. That's not "exploiting" the safeguards, that's abiding by it. As I have written before, even Albright himself conceeded this point in the past:

"Iran did not have to declare that it was building a pilot plant until 180 days before it expected to introduce nuclear material into the plant." (SOURCE: Furor over fuel; Iran. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists May 1, 2003 Albright, David; Hinderstein, Corey)

I would only add one more point regarding Arak. The reactor is often characterized as a weapons proliferation threat because Iran could theoretically extract plutonium from the used reactor fuel in in a process known as reprocessing. However, leaving aside that the Arak reactor is well-known to the IAEA and so will operate under IAEA safeguards, reprocessing requires extensive infrastructure and so cannot be done in secret, away from the IAEA's sights. Furthermore, the Iranians have already offered to foresake reprocessing plutonium. In his article in the NY Times in April 2006, Iran's Ambassador Javad Zarif specifically and publicly mentioned this as part of Iran offer to:

"Refrain from reprocessing or producing plutonium".

And without reprocessing, the reactor at Arak cannot be used to make nukes. It is physically impossible. So ask yourself, why would Iran be willing to give up reprocessing if it is supposedly trying to build nukes as we are told?

Next we come to Albrights Fourth and Fifth alleged misconceptions, in which he claims that Iran has obtained "breakout capacity" which means that Iran as the capacity to use its nuclear program to build nukes quickly, if it decided to do so at some point:

 Misconception 4. Producing HEU from LEU is a long and arduous process, and nuclear weapons breakout will take between one and three years
In fact, learning to produce enriched uranium by operating centrifuges in large numbers is the difficult part on the road to developing a viable gas centrifuge capability.  Subsequently enriching low enriched uranium (LEU) to highly enriched uranium (HEU) is relatively straightforward and can be done quickly, in some cases within months.  As a result, this process of enriching a stock of LEU to weapon-grade is called a nuclear weapons “break-out” capability.

Albright then goes on to provide some interesting facts and statistics and charts on how Iran has this capability to manufacture nukes in a matter of months.

I won't argue about the boring technicalities of how much low-enriched uranium Iran could theoretically turn into bomb-grade highly-enriched uranium in what time period, and whether this is really a threat or not (as others have) since all of that distracts from a more fundamental problem with Albright's alleged "misconception": As I have written before, couching the "threat" of Iran in terms of what it "could" do with a perfectly legal, IAEA-inspected enrichment program is a deliberate conflation of a civilian nuclear energy program with a nuclear weapons program, and a rhetorical ploy intended to hide the fact that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program to start with:

[T]he absence of any actual evidence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons programme is being smoothed over through the use of ambiguities. This is usually done by conflating a nuclear-weapons programme with a nuclear-energy programme....  For example, in addition to overt references to a weapons programme, there may be references to Iran's nuclear "threat", or vague statements about Iran's nuclear "ambitions", or even more tenuously, allusions to Iran's "intentions" to obtain a nuclear-weapons "capability". In a paper entitled "Defusing Iran's Bomb", one pundit claims: "Iran is now no more than 12 to 48 months from acquiring a nuclear bomb ... and seems dead set on securing an option to do so." So, what is Iran months from acquiring: the bomb, or merely an "option" to obtain the bomb? What exactly is an "option" to acquire the bomb, anyway? Can't any country with a nuclear infrastructure be said to have the "option" of using it to build bombs? All these inconvenient issues are covered up by such use of ambiguous language. The ambiguity is useful precisely because such questions don't have to be answered, provided the implied "threat" is communicated.

The fact is that any country with a nuclear program -- even a fully open, IAEA monitored one -- can be similarly accused of seeking "breakout capacity". Japan, Argentina, Brazil... all of these countries (and more to come) could theoretically decide one day to use their nuclear program to build nukes, by further enriching the low-enriched uranium they have into highly-enriched uranium (in fact Japan is widely said to be one weekend away from making nukes.) But that's simply a truism - the fact that they "could" do something is no evidence that they plan on it. Should we start bombing them unless they agree to give up their nuclear programs, because theoretically one day in the indefinite future, they may (nor may not) decide to make nukes?

Indeed, the whole point and reason for the existence of the IAEA inspection process is to catch them if they do decide to build nukes -- and the IAEA has said repeatedly that it has no evidence Iran is seeking the ability to build nukes. The new IAEA head Amano most recently said:

The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Albright himself conceeds that Iran would have to kick out international inspectors if it decided to use its nuclear program to build nukes. Of course Albright says that Iran could avoid kicking out inspectors by conducting the additional steps necessary to make nukes at "clandestine facilities" but first of all, there's no evidence of any such "clandestine facilities" in existence (and secondly, before the uranium can be enriched, it has to be converted, and the IAEA monitors that step too.) In short, to demand that Iran somehow prove that it cannot do something in the indefinite future is ridiculous (not to mention a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which requires the sharing of civilian nuclear technology to the greatest extent possible and without discrimination.)

Finally, the Iranians have nevertheless offered to address any alleged threat of a "breakout" scenario by offering to impose additional limits on their nuclear program, well beyond their legal obligations, for example by opening the program to multinational participation -- an offer that has been endorsed by US and international experts. However, these offers were simply ignored by the US because really, the US is intent on depriving Iran of th right to uranium enrichment, and preventing nuclear weapons proliferation is simply a good cover and pretext for that hidden agenda. But ask yourself: if Iran was secretly intending to use its civilian nuclear energy program to make nukes, then why would it offer to agree to such additional restrictions on its nuclear program, beyond its legal obligations?

I won't deal with Albright's Misconception number 6 on whether Iran would have to actually conduct a nuclear test in order to make a nuke or not, since that is building supposition upon supposition -- there is no evidence of any Iranian nuke's existence or planned-existence, so whether Iran would have to test such a nuke or not is an irrelevant issue.

Finally, as to Albright's 7th alleged misconception, that the so-called "Laptop of Death" documents were not forgeries .... I'll have to deal with this quickly since this post has grown quite long and I am out of time. Look, the United States has NEVER made the laptop available to the IAEA for its review. It has selectively made some documents available to the IAEA, at the last minute in order to prevent the IAEA from giving Iran a clean bill of health in its Sept 2008 report. The IAEA itself has said that it has no evidence to back up what it calls the "alleged studies...supposedly conducted". If the documents are not forgeries, then the US is OBLIGATED under the terms of the IAEA statute to provide them to the IAEA in full. Iran cannot be expected to somehow refute the allegations in documents that it has not been allowed to see. Note that of all the claims against Iran, this is the ONLY one outstanding, and could be resolved one way or another if only the US made the damn thing available to the IAEA.