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 WriterVIENNA 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.
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