IAEA report published, and heightens Iran nuclear fears

[Ali(ISP)]

Guardian

Iran has dramatically accelerated its production of enriched uranium in recent months while refusing to cooperate with an investigation of evidence that it may have worked on designing a bomb, a confidential report by the UN nuclear watchdog has said. In the report to member states, seen by the Guardian, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found Iran had tripled its production rate of uranium enriched to the level of 20% over the past three month. Much of the increase in production has taken place at an underground site known as Fordow, and the report's findings will further increase the international pressure on Iran at a time of already high tension. Tehran says it needs the material for its research reactor, which produces medical isotopes, but western governments argue that its stock of 20% uranium brings it significantly closer to weapons grade fissile material.

The IAEA inspectors also found that Iran had stepped up the installation of centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Over the past three months, 2600 new centrifuges have been brought into operation, spinning uranium gas.

The report found that Iran has now produced nearly five and a half metric tonnes of low enriched uranium – enriched to about 3.5% – and about 109kg of uranium enriched to 20%. If enriched further, to more than 90% purity, the total stockpile would be more than enough to make four nuclear warheads. Iran says it has no intention of making weapons, and the report may not be enough for western countries, led by the US, the UK and France, to persuade Russia and China to take part in an escalation of sanctions.

The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, said the focus on the nuclear programme was a cover for western attempts to oust the clerical regime in Tehran. "I think that, under the appearance of a struggle to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons through the addition of another potential member of the nuclear club, Iran, attempts of a different kind are being made and other aims are being set – to change the regime," he said.

The report also criticised Iran for not co-operating with investigations into its nuclear programme, not allowing inspectors to visit a suspect nuclear site and refusing to answer questions about a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist who provided technical advice. The report concluded that because of Tehran's lack of co-operation "the agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities".

The IAEA also said it had not received a satisfactory explanation of how 20kg of uranium metal had gone missing from an Iranian research laboratory. Inspectors noticed its absence during an audit last August. When they tried to investigate in recent weeks, "Iran indicated that it no longer possessed relevant documentation and that the personnel involved were no longer available", the report said. Some western government analysts believe the missing uranium metal could have been used to test the explosive components of a nuclear warheads. In a previous report, published in November, the IAEA expressed concern that such explosive testing could have been conducted inside a special steel cylindrical vessel at a military site, Parchin. In two visits, in January and last week, IAEA inspectors asked to see Parchin but were refused. "Iran stated that it was still not able to grant access to that site," the report said. Diplomats based in Vienna, the IAEA's headquarters, said the inspectors were told that because Parchin was a military site, senior officials would have to grant access and that would take some time. That position did not change between the IAEA team's first and second visit. According to one diplomat familiar with the IAEA visit last week, Iranian officials initially appeared ready to talk about the inspectors requests but said at the end of the first day they said they would have to check with their superiors. "When they came back on the second day, the progress stopped," the diplomat said.

During the January visit, the IAEA presented a document outlining concerns about intelligence evidence that Iran had experimented on warhead-making designs. The document addressed 65 items but, in each case, Tehran said the evidence was fabricated. "[The inspectors] gave them 65 paragraphs and they came back with 65 nos," a diplomat said. One of the questions raised by the IAEA was about the activities of Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Ukrainian who had worked on the Soviet nuclear weapons programme and worked in Iran from 1996 to 2002. Danilenko has told the IAEA that he was helping the Iranians make microscopic "nano-diamonds" and lecturing. According to an official familiar with the investigation, the Iranians were asked to produce evidence of that work but have so far failed to do so.

At the end of the report, the IAEA's director general, Yukiya Amano, urged Iran to provide the answers to the agency's questions. Diplomats in Vienna said that, until there were substantive responses, no more inspection missions to Tehran were planned. The IAEA member states will consider the report at a board meeting beginning on 5 March, where there could be calls for Iran to be referred to the UN security council for further sanctions. Until now, Russia and China have blocked such a move, but both had urged Iran to co-operate with the IAEA missions. It is not clear which way they will vote at the 5 March meeting.

 

[Playboy]

interesting that on the same day us administration leaks their latest nie report saying that iran is not making a nuclear weapon.


U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb
The latest U.S. intelligence report indicates Iran is pursuing research that could enable it to build a nuclear weapon, but that it has not sought to do so.

By Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

February 23, 2012, 6:11 p.m.


Reporting from Washington—
As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb.

A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003.

The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so.

Although Iran continues to enrich uranium at low levels, U.S. officials say they have not seen evidence that has caused them to significantly revise that judgment. Senior U.S. officials say Israel does not dispute the basic intelligence or analysis.

But Israel appears to have a lower threshold for action than Washington. It regards Iran as a threat to its existence and says it will not allow Iran to become capable of building and delivering a nuclear weapon. Some Israeli officials have raised the prospect of a military strike to stop Iran before it's too late.

It's unclear how much access U.S. intelligence has in Iran, a problem that bedeviled efforts to determine whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The assessment that Saddam Hussein had secretly amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to build a nuclear weapon, cited by the George W. Bush administration to justify the invasion, turned out to be wrong.

Iran barred inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog group, from visiting Parchin, a military site, this week to determine whether explosives tests were aimed at developing nuclear technology.

An IAEA report in November cited "serious concerns" about "possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," but did not reach hard conclusions. Another IAEA report is imminent.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted Wednesday that Tehran had no intention of producing nuclear weapons. In remarks broadcast on state television, he said that "owning a nuclear weapon is a big sin."

But he said that "pressure, sanctions and assassinations" would not stop Iran from producing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The U.S. and European Union have imposed strict sanctions on Iran's oil and banking sectors, and unidentified assassins on motorcycles have killed several nuclear scientists in Iran, attacks for which Tehran has blamed Israel.

For now, U.S. military and intelligence officials say they don't believe Iran's leadership has made the decision to build a bomb.

"I think they are keeping themselves in a position to make that decision," James R. Clapper Jr., director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 16. "But there are certain things they have not yet done and have not done for some time."

Clapper and CIA Director David H. Petraeus told a separate Senate hearing that Iran was enriching uranium below 20% purity. Uranium is considered weapons grade when it is enriched to about 90% purity, although it is still potentially usable at lower enrichment levels.

U.S. spy agencies also have not seen evidence of a decision-making structure on nuclear weapons around Khamenei, said David Albright, who heads the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security and is an expert on Iran's nuclear program.

Albright's group estimates that with the centrifuges Iran already has, it could enrich uranium to sufficient purity to make a bomb in as little as six months, should it decide to do so.

It is not known precisely what other technical hurdles Iran would have to overcome, but Albright and many other experts believe that if it decides to proceed, the country has the scientific knowledge to design and build a crude working bomb in as little as a year. It would take as long as three years, Albright estimated, for Iran to build a warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.

Albright said a push by Iran to build a nuclear weapon probably would be detected.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the former CIA director, told a House committee that such a decision would be a "red line" prompting an international response.

Stephen Hadley, who was President Bush's national security advisor, said it would be too late to respond then.

"When they're assembling a bomb, that's going to be the hardest thing to see," said Hadley, now a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a government-funded think tank.

Some developments have bolstered the view that Iran is secretly pursuing a weapon.

In 2009, Western intelligence agencies discovered a clandestine underground facility called Fordow, near the city of Qom, that is said to be capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium.

Israel worries that such facilities may be invulnerable to conventional bombing if Iran begins building a weapon. Israeli officials have warned that Iran could create what they call a "zone of immunity" by year's end.

And some U.S. officials have come to different conclusions about the intelligence. Among them is Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "We know that [Iran is] aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program," Rogers said this month.

U.S. intelligence on Iran's nuclear ambitions has vacillated over the years. After Iranian dissidents exposed a long-hidden program in 2002, U.S. intelligence warned that Tehran was "determined to build nuclear weapons."

In 2006, Bush asked aides to present him with options for a U.S. attack. But newly recruited informants, intercepted conversations and notes from deliberations of Iranian officials led U.S. intelligence to reconsider its warning.

In December 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate judged with "high confidence" that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. It judged with "moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

In his 2010 memoir, "Decision Points," Bush questioned whether analysts had reversed course to atone for their errors on Iraq.

Michael Hayden, who was CIA director in 2007, said the analysts who wrote the report had no political motivation. "It was intelligence professionals calling balls and strikes the way they saw them," he said in an interview.

He said the 2007 estimate was poorly worded and "quickly got translated into 'Iran stopped its nuclear program,'" which he does not believe is accurate.

The more important finding, Hadley said, was that Iran was continuing its efforts to develop fissile material and to build ballistic missiles capable of delivering warheads.

"They are doing everything they can to put themselves in a position so that they have a clear and fairly quick route to a nuclear weapon," he said.