INSPECTING
IRAN
The Media Spins The Latest UN Inspectors’ Report
JNV Anti-War Briefing 121
2 April 2010 |
This briefing
is available as a pdf.
Posted 3 April
2010 |
THE LATEST IAEA REPORT
The Western media have once again failed
to accurately report the latest developments in the nuclear confrontation
with Iran, placing the most alarming possible interpretation on
the
latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), which was made public on 3 March.
There are three major issues: how the report
treated the issues; what this indicates about the attitude of
the IAEA’s new leadership towards Iran; and how the media
(mis)handled the report.
Before moving onto the details, an accurate
summary has been rendered by the editors of the respected mainstream
arms control journal, The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists. (19
March)
On the IAEA report itself, the Bulletin
editors write: ‘It’s important that a decision to
abandon negotiations and move to crippling sanctions or military
attacks be based on solid facts of wrongdoing. If there was a
case for sanctions or military strike before, the report adds
nothing new.’
On the reporting issue: ‘the media
has seriously misrepresented the actual contents of the report....
an already dangerous standoff is being made worse by the distortion
of this recent IAEA report... Such incorrect analysis... weighs
in the balance between war and peace in the Middle East.’
WHAT THE REPORT DIDN’T
SAY
The latest IAEA report starts with a one-sided
and incomplete account of Iran’s relationship with the agency,
listing a number of UN Security Council resolutions Iran has refused
to obey—not pointing out that these resolutions demand an
end to peaceful nuclear activities Iran is entitled to carry out
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), something the
UNSC is not entitled to ask.
Interestingly, the report makes only the
most oblique reference to the most important recent IAEA initiative
in relation to Iran: the ‘Work
Plan’ of 2007, which defined the problem areas in Iran’s
nuclear activities, and specified the actions Iran had to carry
out to satisfy the agency’s concerns (see JNV
Briefing 108).
The six main areas were cleared
up (Iran’s plutonium experiments; the centrifuge programme;
the contamination of some equipment at at Tehran University with
Highly Enriched Uranium; designs bought from Pakistan for shaping
uranium metal; Iran’s experiments with Polonium-210, a possible
nuclear bomb trigger; and suspicions about the uranium mine at
Ghachine inside Iran).
The intensive and productive work on these
troubling topics is dismissed in a single half-sentence in the
latest IAEA report: ‘Through Iran’s active cooperation,
progress has been made in the past in certain other areas where
questions have been raised....’ (para. 45)
THE “ALLEGED STUDIES”
The one major area remaining after the completion
of the Work Plan in November 2007 concerned a number of nuclear
proliferation-related documents said to have been found on an
Iranian government laptop by a foreign intelligence agency—and
provided to the IAEA.
In the Work Plan, these documents were to
be dealt with in the following way (these three sentences are
the sum total of what is written in the Work
Plan on this topic): ‘Alleged Studies: Iran reiterated
that it considers the following alleged studies as politically
motivated and baseless allegations. The Agency will however provide
Iran with access to the documentation it has in its possession
regarding: the Green Salt Project, the high explosive testing
and the missile re-entry vehicle. As a sign of good will and cooperation
with the Agency, upon receiving all related documents, Iran will
review and inform the Agency of its assessment.’
No more was asked of Iran.
The ‘informing the Agency’ of
Iran’s assessment of the documents took place on 14 May
2008. (para. 18, IAEA
Board report, 26 May 2008) The IAEA responded by saying two
things.
On the one hand: ‘It should be emphasised,
however, that the Agency has not detected the actual use of nuclear
material in connection with the alleged studies’.
On the other: ‘at this stage, Iran
has not provided the Agency with all the information, access to
documents and access to individuals necessary to support Iran’s
statements’.
In other words, the IAEA ditched the Work
Plan process. More was required than 'informing the Agency'.
THE FEBRUARY IAEA REPORT
Since May 2008, Iran has steadfastly refused
to provide access to the documents and individuals demanded by
the IAEA to resolve the ‘alleged studies’ issues.
(Iran claims resolution of these matters would require ‘access
to sensitive information related to its conventional military
and missile related activities’—para. 15, IAEA
Board report, 15 Sept. 2008.)
These ancient allegations are the basis
for the strong language in the latest IAEA report, for example
para. 41, which is almost a carbon copy of previous reports, but
which was treated by the media as a frightening new development,
with its talk of ‘extensive’ ‘consistent and
credible’ information ‘collected from a variety of
sources’—language used in previous IAEA reports. (For
example, para. 19, IAEA
Board report, 28 August 2009)
Para. 41 of the February
2010 report says: ‘Altogether, this raises concerns
about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed
activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for
a missile.’ Possible. Not proven. No independent IAEA evidence
is even suggested.
Para. 45 says: the IAEA would like to discuss
with Iran various allegations. The key sentence is: ‘Addressing
these issues is important for clarifying the Agency’s concerns
about these activities and those described above, which seem to
have continued beyond 2004.’ There is an obvious friction
between this suggestion and the 2007 US National
Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that Iran had
had a nuclear weapons programme, but this ended in 2003.
However, para. 45 still only says that these
alleged activities ‘seem’ to have continued beyond
2004. No new evidence is provided, even hinted at. Hence the conclusion
of the editors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: ‘the
report adds nothing new.... no new information has been revealed....
the report doesn’t contain any evidence that the public
hasn’t already seen.’
Though the editors admit one of the allegations
appears for the first time in an IAEA document: ‘the new
report does mention a document that purports to prove Iran considered
building a neutron generator using explosively compressed uranium
deuteride, the existence of the undated and unverified evidence
was actually first revealed in the Times of London last December.’
(Times,
14 December 2009)
WHAT THE MEDIA SAID
The New York Times
wrote: ‘The United Nations’ nuclear inspectors
declared for the first time on Thursday that they had extensive
evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities”
by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead.’
(19
Feb.)
The Independent:
‘In a sharp and potentially ominous new warning, the UN’s
nuclear watchdog in Vienna is set to say for the first time there
are reasons to fear that Iran may be on its way to attaching nuclear
payloads to its stock of ballistic missiles.’ (19
Feb.)
The Guardian:
‘The UN’s nuclear watchdog raised concerns for the
first time yesterday that Iran might be developing a nuclear warhead
for a missile.’ (19
Feb.)
All wrong. The warnings weren’t ‘new’
and the concerns had no solid evidence: ‘the Agency has
not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the
alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this
regard.’ (para. 54, IAEA
Board report, Feb. 2008)
The funniest error made by the commentators
concerned the IAEA report that Iran had moved almost its entire
stock of low enriched uranium (LEU), nearly 2,000kg, above ground
to a pilot plant being used to produce 20% enriched fuel
‘That is
far more than would be needed for its ostensible purpose –
to provide fuel for a medical research reactor,’ said the
Guardian,
taking its cue from David Albright, head of the US Institute for
Science and International Security, who said: ‘They seem
to be sending a signal.... They are playing with fire.’
(19
Feb.)
Iran’s representative
to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, explained on 1 March that all
the LEU is held in a single container; it all had to be moved
to the surface so that some LEU could be offloaded for enrichment
to 20%. The bulk of it was then returned to its original underground
location in the LEU container. (www.armscontrol.org,
5 March 2010) There was no ‘signal’, no ‘playing
with fire’.
The truth is that
the IAEA report was a harsh restatement of unproven allegations,
and the media hyped the story even more. (For more on the attitude
of the new IAEA leadership towards Iran, see JNV
Briefing 122.)
JNV
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