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.
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