IAEA: Iran evasive about its nuclear program

Published 28 May 2008

Iran’s march toward the bomb continues unabated; the U.S. intelligence community may have concluded that Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but a UN atomic agency says indications are to the contrary

It is not every day that a UN agency — a UN agency! — is more hawkish than the Bush administration on a major international security issue. This turn of events should not surprise us: When the administration sponsors, and publicizes, a nonsensical, baseless National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) — as it did last December — which claims that Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons program, strange things will happen. Alas, we note that this is not the first time the U.S. intelligence community proved not only useless in its advise to policy makers, but positively harmful (just ask the administration’s officials how easy it is to persuade other countries to impose meaningful economic sanctions on Iran now that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Iran has “halted” its nuclear weapons program in 2003). We urge readers to read Tim Weiner’s prize-winning Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA for many more examples of shoddy analysis and reckless conclusions offered by the intelligence community to U.S. leaders. As they say: Some football teams win because of their quarterbacks; other teams win regardless of their quarterbacks; and other teams yet win despite of their quarterbacks. We know too many good, dedicated, hard-working people who have done excellent work for our country while serving in the CIA and other agencies — some in the field, others behind their analyst desk — so we will not expound on what, precisely, we believe to have been the relationship over these past five decades between the U.S. policy-making “team” and the intelligence “quarterback.” Tim Weiner is less restrained, and more poignant, in his assessment.

Back to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The New York Times’s Elaine Sciolino writes that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained “a matter of serious concern” and that Iran continued to owe the agency “substantial explanations. The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation. Part of the agency’s case hinges on eighteen documents listed in the report and presented to Iran that, according to Western intelligence agencies, indicate the Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing, and a missile warhead design — activities that could be associated with constructing nuclear weapons. “There are certain parts of their nuclear program where the military seems to have played a role,” said one senior official close to the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic constraints. He added, “We want to understand why.”

The report also says that Iran is learning to make more powerful centrifuges that are operating faster and more efficiently, the product of robust research and development that have not been fully disclosed to the agency. That means that the country may be producing enriched uranium — which can be used to make electricity or to produce bombs — faster than expected at the same time as it a replaces its older generation of less reliable centrifuges. Some of the centrifuge components have been produced by Iran’s military, said the report, prepared by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency. Sciolino writes that the report makes no effort to disguise the agency’s frustration with Iran’s lack of openness. It describes, for example, Iran’s installation of new centrifuges, known as the IR-2 and IR-3 (for Iranian second and third generations) and other modifications at its site at Natanz, as “significant, and as such should have been communicated to the agency.” The agency also said that during a visit in April, it was denied access to sites where centrifuge components were being manufactured and where research of uranium enrichment was being conducted. The report does not say how much enriched uranium the Iranians are now producing, but the official connected to the agency said that since December, it was slightly less than 150 kilograms, or 330 pounds, about double the amount they were producing during the same period about 18 months ago. “The Iranians are certainly being confronted with some pretty strong evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and they are being petulant and defensive,” said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security. “The report lays out what the agency knows, and it is very damning. I’ve never seen it laid out quite like this.”