A follow-up report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear program will be published next month and is expected to be harsher than the last one, which the IAEA released in November.
The last IAEA report cobbled together old and questionable intelligence and rose unfounded concerns about a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. This became the primary basis imposing even harsher international sanctions against Iran targeting their financial and oil sectors, measures which have had harmful effects on the Iranian population.
Leaked statements about the upcoming report to be released in March claim it will include new details about an alleged effort by Tehran to develop a nuclear warhead for a ground-to-ground missile.
An IAEA delegation visited Tehran to engage diplomatically with Iranian authorities regarding their nuclear program. While initial reports characterized the visit as constructive, Reuters later reported that Western diplomats have said the Iranian visit was a total failure and that Iran did not open up its facilities to inspection. The IAEA will return to Tehran for another round of discussions on February 21.
The leaked statements on the new IAEA report may be overblown, just as happened the last time around. Robert Kelley, a retired IAEA director and nuclear engineer, told the New Yorker‘s Seymour Hersh “that he could find very little new information in the IAEA report. He noted that hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established.”
Some even dismissed the report as politically motivated, claiming the IAEA’s new Director General, Yukiya Amano, has a pro-Western bias. Indeed, the Guardian’s Julian Borger compiled a series of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks which reveal a similar evaluation of Amano by the U.S.
In October 2009, as Amano was coming in as Director General, the U.S. State Department wrote that he was “DG [Director General] of all states, but in agreement with us.” According to the cables, Amano reminded the U.S. ambassador that he would have to be “fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
As Flynt Leverett, former Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, wrote at the time, “ever since Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei stepped down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late 2009, the United States and some of its allies have pushed Baradei’s successor, Yukiya Amano, to ratify Western arguments that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons.”
“There are many reasons,” Leverett continued, “to question virtually every detail in the IAEA’s accounting of the “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program. But, more importantly, the stories do not indicate that Tehran is currently trying to produce nuclear weapons.”
While the IAEA report raised the possibility, without evidence, that there could be military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, it actually concluded that “the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.”
All 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2007, and again in 2011, that there is no military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. A U.S. intelligence official explained to The Washington Post last month that Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons: “Our belief is that they are reserving judgment on whether to continue with key steps they haven’t taken regarding nuclear weapons.”
Even the Obama administration has had to admit this. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.”
This conforms to previous assessments. Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama’s former director of national intelligence, told Congress in March 2009, “We judge in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons design and weaponization activities” but that Tehran “is keeping open the option to develop them.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA, said that same year that he did not “believe the Iranians have made a decision to go for a nuclear weapon, but they are absolutely determined to have the technology because they believe it brings you power, prestige and an insurance policy.”
The more critical report next month has the potential to trigger even more belligerent responses from the U.S. and Israel, and could set the stage for a military attack on Iran, whether its findings are based in truth or not.
Amano has a pro-Western bias? That is precisely why he was elected. The US has had enough of non-compliant IAEA heads. Regime change is the desired policy. Logic and facts are irrelevant. All of the posturing is PR designed to cover the ass*s of Western leaders.
Didn't work the first time? Not enough panic?
Push more innuendo and crud until it works.
Amano should reflect on what he is pushing. Depending on how this ends and him being just another tool that can be dropped at whim, this may well end in a criminal court.
“the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.”
That tidbit needs to be bashed over the heads of the pro-war idiots till they either shut up or just admit that evidence just doesn't matter.
written by aipac edited in tel avia…loved by the US media and congress
CIA-IAEA.
As usual, IAEA has disclosed all the confidential information that Iran has supplied to it, to the "Western Diplomats" beforehand. That alone shows that the reports of stooge Amano on Iranian possible diversions is just Israeli-American propaganda. Amano and Ban are setting new precedents in discrediting UN and its agencies. That is very good, in fact. UN and its agencies have never been much of a constructive factor in international affairs. For the past quarter of century it has served solely the goals of the West and little by little is losing its utility. Ban and Amano are doing very well in that regard.
Yes, logic and facts are irrelevant. Israel has undeclared arsenal of WMD and its agresive and brutal regime. It wages wars of aggression, assasinations, does not respect international norm and laws and "this truly satanic regime" enjoys imunity ?? Informed people on the planet fully support iran
R I G H T S and reject rasist and other attacks on Iran. peter czech
I wonder what point we are at as history repeats itself? Somewhere about mid-1941 when Roosevelt slapped the oil embargo on Japan or froze their US financial assets?
The last time Usrael fabricated a story about a Iranian nuclear warhead was when they talked endlessly (literally for years) about a "black box" that was part of a newly designed Iranian warhead. (The story came from a document off the "laptop of death"). There were endless stories about how the black box was "almost certainly a nuclear warhead". It turns out that the black box was actually A TELEMETRY UNIT FOR SENDING BACK SIGNALS ON TEST FLIGHTS. Broad and Sanger from the NYT knew that the "black box" was a telemetry unit, but they kept printing stories about how it was a nuclear warhead. (fFor details about this, see pages 95 to 151 here: http://www.scribd.com/dave742/d/39038338-Pierre-G… ) I guess more of the same BS propaganda is coming.
The last IAEA report was nothing but rehashed lies. I have a feeling that this new one about nuclear warhead development will be nothing but rehashed "black box" nonsense. Be sure to spread the word that this "black box" is really a telemetry unit for sending back signals from test flights.
IAEA is irrelevant. Well except when it comes time to gin up a war on Iran.
Here we go again. Pure theater. Now when is Hillary going to get her point across in the UN by hammering her shoe on the table?
Did they discuss the contents with the Group pf 5+1? Or did they just adopt the 'Euro' version – written in America – of what they wanted to hear.
Message to Obama:
Please STOP your Jewish Terror Whore Welfare Queen state from threatening Iran over their non existent nuclear program!!!! The price of gas where I live is $3.83/gal and it is going to destroy your "fragile" economic recovery, as well as destroying your reelection chances!!!
These Isreallys need to be slapped down but HARD and put right in there place finally.
I don't know why Iran is even bothering to jump through the ropes, because we all know it's one big charade so Obama and Netanyahu can tell their people "we tried" before they start bombing. It won't matter what the Iranians do in the end, because it never matters when the west targets another country for "regime change."