IAEA: Iran Did Not Underreport Enrichment

Discrepancy Was "Inherent in the Early Commissioning Process"

by Jason Ditz, February 22, 2009

Much hay was made late last week over the allegation that the Iranian government had underreported the amount of urnaium it had enriched through November. The White House accused Iran of reneging on its international obligations, and called the nation an “urgent problem that has to be addressed.”

Not so, says the International Atomic Enegy Agency (IAEA), which said the discrepancy between the reported and actual figures were “inherent in the early commissioning phases of such a facility when it is not known in advance how it will perform in practice.”

They added that nothing indicates that Iran made any deliberate attempts to conceal the amount of uranium it had enriched, that Iran had been cooperating on the matter to improve future estimates, and that no nuclear material could have been removed from the facility.

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