Don't Bomb Iran

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  • US labs use British nuclear factory to build new bombs

    The US has been using Britain’s atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme, according to evidence seen by the Guardian. This has been suspected for some years.  The US weapons industry has long been prevented by Congress from researching a “replacement warhead”, and the UK denies it has such a programme. But the UK government has recently spent tens of billions mysteriously upgrading Britain’s factory at Aldermaston, and at Christmas it secretly sold it’s stake to US companies;  thus creating a Guantanamo for nukes, an offshore legal black hole where US companies can design the next generation of weapons without Congressional oversight and without sharing the technical secrets with foreign companies or parliaments.     US weapons labs last week unhappily revealed that Obama may end civilian control of bomb development after decades,  and move such work to the Pantagon –  a move seen to be an attempt to weaken the labs’ influence on policy.    Article 1 of the Non-Proliferation treaty prohibits ‘transfer’ of nuclear weapons between countries, but the US and UK have a secret agreement on nuclear technology sharing –  including recent warhead re-entry upgrades that gave British bombs the ability to destroy very hard targets in a first strike.  Koffi Annan describes such modernisation as a swindle incompatible with the NPT

    Guardian article below:

    US Using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme

    Joint warhead research carried out at Aldermaston

    Work breaches nuclear treaty, campaigners warn

    Matthew Taylor and Richard Norton-Taylor

    The Guardian Monday 9 February 2009

    The US has been using Britain’s atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.

    US defence officials said that “very valuable” warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments.

    The Ministry of Defence admitted it is working with the US on the UK’s “existing nuclear warhead stockpile and the range of replacement options that might be available” but declined to give any further information.

    Last night, opposition MPs called for a full parliamentary inquiry into the extent of the collaboration at Aldermaston and campaign groups warned any such deal was in breach of international law. They added that it also undermined Britain’s claim to have an independent nuclear weapons programme and meant British taxpayers were effectively subsidising America’s nuclear programme.

    The US president, Barack Obama, while on the campaign trail said he wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons and that one of his first actions on taking office would be to “stop the development of new nuclear weapons”. But the Pentagon is at odds with the president. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, and other senior officials argue that the US’s existing arsenal needs to be upgraded and that would not constitute “new” weapons.

    Kate Hudson, of CND, said: “Any work preparing the way for new warheads cuts right across the UK’s commitment to disarm, which it signed up to in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That this work may be contributing to both future US and British warheads is nothing short of scandalous.”

    Nick Harvey, defence spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said parliament and the country would react with “outrage” at the prospect of British taxpayers funding a new US nuclear weapon.

    “All this backroom dealing and smoke and mirrors policy is totally unacceptable, the government must open the Aldermaston accounts to full parliamentary scrutiny,” he added.

    The extent of US involvement at Aldermaston came to light in an interview with John Harvey, policy and planning director at the US National Nuclear Security Administration, carried out last year by the thinktanks Chatham House and the Centre for Strategic Studies.

    Referring to “dual axis hydrodynamic” experiments which, with the help of computer modelling, replicate the conditions inside a warhead at the moment it starts to explode, Harvey said: “There are some capabilities that the UK has that we don’t have and that we borrow… that I believe we have been able to exploit that’s been very valuable to us.”

    It is unclear whether the experiments are still being carried out but, in the same interview, Harvey admitted that the US and UK had struck a new deal over the level of cooperation, including work on US plans for a new generation of nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). He said: “We have recently, I can’t tell you when, taken steps to amend the MDA [Mutual Defence Agreement], not only to extend it but to amend it to allow for a broader extent of cooperation than in the past, and this has to do with the RRW effort.”

    Campaigners said the comments represent the first direct evidence that the US is using UK facilities to develop its nuclear programme. Lawyers acting on their behalf said the increasing levels of cooperation and the extension the MDA breach the non-proliferation treaty, which states: “Each nuclear weapon state party to the treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices indirectly or indirectly.”

    The MoD admitted the two countries are working together, “examining both the optimum life of the UK’s existing nuclear warhead stockpile and the range of replacement options that might be available to inform decisions on whether and how we may need to refurbish or replace the existing warhead likely to be necessary in the next parliament”.

    Congress has stopped funding research into RRW but campaigners believe the US military may have used facilities in the UK to get around the restrictions at home.

    “Billions of pounds have been poured into the Atomic Weapons Establishment over recent years to build new research facilities,” said Hudson. “If these are being used to support US programmes outside Congress’s controls on spending, it raises even more serious questions about why the British taxpayer is paying for a so-called ‘independent deterrent’.”

  • Israel broke international law in Syrian attack: El Baradei

    The Israeli attack on Syria in September 2007 broke international law says the chief of  the UN’s nuclear agency,  in an interview with Newsweek.  He complained that instead of  giving the IAEA evidence of an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor,  Israel “violated the rules of international law on the use of unilateral force”, adding that the IAEA still does not have evidence of a Syrian reactor at the bombed site.  Reports have surfaced that the US helped Israel with the attack

    Newsweek:  ‘You Cannot Treat Iran Like a Donkey’

    Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the IAEA, says there is now a chance for real dialogue between Tehran and the West.

    Lally Weymouth

    NEWSWEEK

    From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009

    Also in Davos, Mohamed ElBaradei, the controversial director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sat down with NEWSWEEK’s Lally Weymouth to defend his record. Several Bush administration officials as well as some nonproliferation experts claim ElBaradei soft-pedaled criticisms of Iran’s nuclear program in order to avoid justifying a U.S. military attack on that country. ElBaradei disagrees. Excerpts:

    Weymouth: In retrospect, do you think you allowed Iran to push the limits?
    ElBaradei:     This is a complete misunderstanding. We have done as much as we can do in Iran to make sure that we understand the history and the present status of their [nuclear] program, to try to push them as far as we can, within our authority, to come clean. The idea people have that we are God, that we are able to cross borders, open doors … We don’t have that [kind of] authority.

    Iran has a technical aspect and a political aspect. The technical aspect is our part of the job. The political aspect is the dialogue to build confidence and trust. I have said for the past six years that the policy of building trust between the West—the United States in particular—and Iran has failed completely. We haven’t moved one iota.

    What do you mean exactly?
    You’re not going to have trust unless you have a direct dialogue. President Obama right now is saying he’s ready to have a direct dialogue without preconditions, based on mutual respect. I say this is absolutely overdue.

    You cannot … treat Iran like a donkey, with carrots and sticks. This is a competition for power in the Middle East.

    Iran versus the West?
    Well, it’s a competition between Iran and the West … Iran wants to have its role as a regional security power recognized

    … They see that if you have the technology that can allow you to develop a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, it gives you power, prestige and security … They heard from the previous administration talk about allocating funds for regime change, about an Axis of Evil, and if you were in their place, you would do everything you could to protect yourself.

    Do you think there’s a chance dialogue will work?
    You have to try. It might not work, but I know the majority of the Iranian people want to have a normal relationship with the U.S., particularly the young people. They want to be part of the international community. If you don’t talk, what do you get?

    You were elected IAEA director with the support of the United States, and later Washington treated you quite badly.
    It was during my third re-election when former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton initiated a campaign to block my re-election. They did not get one single country to stand against me, and in the end I was elected by consensus with U.S. support. You can disagree with the head of the international organization, but we are not there to implement the policies of one country. If an organization like IAEA is regarded as a broker for one country, it will be killed.

    Experts say you’ve been quite tough on Iran since the National Intelligence Estimatein 2007.
    We haven’t changed. We have always been tough. What they don’t like is, they say I speak outside of the box. In many cases, privately and in public, I have been telling them, you need to support me with your policy, and your policy is not working. Either you want a leader for an international institution or you want some technocrat. But if you have a technocrat, you will go nowhere.

    People say you weren’t tough enough on Syria for building a nuclear reactor.
    I have been very harsh on Israel because they violated the rules of international law on the use of unilateral force, and they did not provide us with the information before the bombing [with] which we could have established whether Syria was building a nuclear reactor … Now we are doing our best to try to see what Syria was doing, but it’s like Iran. I cannot jump the gun and say Syria was building a nuclear facility because what we are doing now is trying to verify what was there.

    Why don’t you criticize Syria and North Korea for building this facility?
    Because we don’t have the evidence. If I had had the evidence before the bombing, I could have done it in 24 hours.

    URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/182525

  • IAEA snow banner – “Yes we can”

    A giant “YES, WE CAN!” was carved in the snow outside the IAEA building on Tuesday.   Norbert Aschenbrenner came into work early for the job, and was probably not the only IAEA employee who expects more respect from the new White House than the trashing it got from the last one.  Picture  and AP story below

    IAEA employee happy that Bush is gone

    Obama inauguration scenes from around the world

    1 day ago

    VIENNA, Austria (AP) — It was just a scribble in the snow.

    But the giant “YES, WE CAN!” that Norbert Aschenbrenner carved in huge block letters at the U.N. complex in Vienna on Tuesday was a poignant expression of how many people in the international community are embracing Barack Obama.

    Aschenbrenner works for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which went up against President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction; the IAEA insisted its inspectors had found no evidence of any.

    Aschenbrenner said he felt compelled to do something to express his pleasure with the change of leadership in Washington. “So I came in early today, at 7 a.m., and felt a bit like a graffiti sprayer,” he said.

    U.N. workers peered down at the giant slogan from their office windows and snapped photos with their cell phones.

    By midafternoon, it had mostly melted away.

    “We trust this is not a metaphor for how quickly the vision of Obama will be dissipated!” said Neil Jarvis, an IAEA official from South Africa. “May it rather last for a long, long time.”

    _By William J. Kole.

  • White House again says it rejected Israeli attack on Iran

    The White House has rejected support for an Israeli air attack on Iran, according to a major article in the Bush-friendly  NY Times.  A few weeks ago, the same White House said it rejected an attack on Gaza in Time magazine, but Bush has now stunned allies in the UN Security Council (and even Condi Rice) with his strong support for the Gaza attack.   So you have to ask: is this all simply White House lies, and the Bush-friendly media is just trying to distance an enthusiastic White House from an imminent  Iran attack?

    The long (and inaccurate) NYT article is below.

    New York Times January 11, 2009

    U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site

    By DAVID E. SANGER
    WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last
    year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on
    Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized
    new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to
    develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign
    officials.

    White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had
    decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested,
    or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the
    White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But
    the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request
    to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where
    the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

    The White House denied that request outright, American officials said,
    and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the
    tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up
    intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new
    American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a
    major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to
    President-elect Barack Obama.

    This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush
    administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on
    Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and
    former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear
    inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the
    record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence
    developed on Iran.

    Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this
    account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and
    administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.

    The interviews also suggest that while Mr. Bush was extensively briefed
    on options for an overt American attack on Iran’s facilities, he never
    instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, even during
    the final year of his presidency, contrary to what some critics have
    suggested.

    The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top
    administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that
    any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the
    expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort
    further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the
    possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in
    which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.

    Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions
    aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions
    imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the
    uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of
    whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack
    on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.

    The covert American program, started in early 2008, includes renewed
    American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along
    with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical
    systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is
    aimed at delaying the day that Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel
    and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.

    Knowledge of the program has been closely held, yet inside the Bush
    administration some officials are skeptical about its chances of
    success, arguing that past efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program
    have been detected by the Iranians and have only delayed, not derailed,
    their drive to unlock the secrets of uranium enrichment.

    Late last year, international inspectors estimated that Iran had 3,800
    centrifuges spinning, but American intelligence officials now estimate
    that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000, enough to produce about one weapon’s
    worth of uranium every eight months or so.

    While declining to be specific, one American official dismissed the
    latest covert operations against Iran as “science experiments.” One
    senior intelligence official argued that as Mr. Bush prepared to leave
    office, the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons
    capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped.

    Others disagreed, making the point that the Israelis would not have been
    dissuaded from conducting an attack if they believed that the American
    effort was unlikely to prove effective.

    Since his election on Nov. 4, Mr. Obama has been extensively briefed on
    the American actions in Iran, though his transition aides have refused
    to comment on the issue.

    Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama must decide whether the covert
    actions begun by Mr. Bush are worth the risks of disrupting what he has
    pledged will be a more active diplomatic effort to engage with Iran.

    Either course could carry risks for Mr. Obama. An inherited intelligence
    or military mission that went wrong could backfire, as happened to
    President Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. But a decision
    to pull back on operations aimed at Iran could leave Mr. Obama
    vulnerable to charges that he is allowing Iran to speed ahead toward a
    nuclear capacity, one that could change the contours of power in the
    Middle East.

    An Intelligence Conflict

    Israel’s effort to obtain the weapons, refueling capacity and permission
    to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran grew out of its disbelief and
    anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that
    concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear
    weapons four years earlier.

    That conclusion also stunned Mr. Bush’s national security team — and
    Mr. Bush himself, who was deeply suspicious of the conclusion, according
    to officials who discussed it with him.

    The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate, was based on a trove
    of Iranian reports obtained by penetrating Iran’s computer networks.

    Those reports indicated that Iranian engineers had been ordered to halt
    development of a nuclear warhead in 2003, even while they continued to
    speed ahead in enriching uranium, the most difficult obstacle to
    building a weapon.

    The “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate, which were
    publicly released, emphasized the suspension of the weapons work.

    The public version made only glancing reference to evidence described at
    great length in the 140-page classified version of the assessment: the
    suspicion that Iran had 10 or 15 other nuclear-related facilities, never
    opened to international inspectors, where enrichment activity, weapons
    work or the manufacturing of centrifuges might be taking place.

    The Israelis responded angrily and rebutted the American report,
    providing American intelligence officials and Adm. Mike Mullen, the
    chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with evidence that they said
    indicated that the Iranians were still working on a weapon.

    While the Americans were not convinced that the Iranian weapons
    development was continuing, the Israelis were not the only ones highly
    critical of the United States report. Secretary Gates, a former director
    of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the report had presented the
    evidence poorly, underemphasizing the importance of Iran’s enrichment
    activity and overemphasizing the suspension of a weapons-design effort
    that could easily be turned back on.

    In an interview, Mr. Gates said that in his whole career he had never
    seen “an N.I.E. that had such an impact on U.S. diplomacy,” because
    “people figured, well, the military option is now off the table.”

    Prime Minister Olmert came to the same conclusion. He had previously
    expected, according to several Americans and Israeli officials, that Mr.
    Bush would deal with Iran’s nuclear program before he left office.
    “Now,” said one American official who bore the brunt of Israel’s
    reaction, “they didn’t believe he would.”

    Attack Planning

    Early in 2008, the Israeli government signaled that it might be
    preparing to take matters into its own hands. In a series of meetings,
    Israeli officials asked Washington for a new generation of powerful
    bunker-busters, far more capable of blowing up a deep underground plant
    than anything in Israel’s arsenal of conventional weapons. They asked
    for refueling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach Iran
    and return to Israel. And they asked for the right to fly over Iraq.

    Mr. Bush deflected the first two requests, pushing the issue off, but
    “we said ‘hell no’ to the overflights,” one of his top aides said. At
    the White House and the Pentagon, there was widespread concern that a
    political uproar in Iraq about the use of its American-controlled
    airspace could result in the expulsion of American forces from the
    country.

    The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, declined
    several requests over the past four weeks to be interviewed about
    Israel’s efforts to obtain the weapons from Washington, saying through
    aides that he was too busy.

    Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea
    that appeared to be a dry run for an attack on the enrichment plant at
    Natanz. When the exercise was analyzed at the Pentagon, officials
    concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equaled the distance
    between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site.

    “This really spooked a lot of people,” one White House official said.
    White House officials discussed the possibility that the Israelis would
    fly over Iraq without American permission. In that case, would the
    American military be ordered to shoot them down? If the United States
    did not interfere to stop an Israeli attack, would the Bush
    administration be accused of being complicit in it?

    Admiral Mullen, traveling to Israel in early July on a previously
    scheduled trip, questioned Israeli officials about their intentions. His
    Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, argued that an aerial
    attack could set Iran’s program back by two or three years, according to
    officials familiar with the exchange. The American estimates at the time
    were far more conservative.

    Yet by the time Admiral Mullen made his visit, Israeli officials appear
    to have concluded that without American help, they were not yet capable
    of hitting the site effectively enough to strike a decisive blow against
    the Iranian program.

    The United States did give Israel one item on its shopping list:
    high-powered radar, called the X-Band, to detect any Iranian missile
    launchings. It was the only element in the Israeli request that could be
    used solely for defense, not offense.

    Mr. Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said last week that Mr. Gates —
    whom Mr. Obama is retaining as defense secretary — believed that “a
    potential strike on the Iranian facilities is not something that we or
    anyone else should be pursuing at this time.”

    A New Covert Push

    Throughout 2008, the Bush administration insisted that it had a plan to
    deal with the Iranians: applying overwhelming financial pressure that
    would persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, as foreign
    enterprises like the French company Total pulled out of Iranian oil
    projects, European banks cut financing, and trade credits were squeezed.

    But the Iranians were making uranium faster than the sanctions were
    making progress. As Mr. Bush realized that the sanctions he had pressed
    for were inadequate and his military options untenable, he turned to the
    C.I.A. His hope, several people involved in the program said, was to
    create some leverage against the Iranians, by setting back their nuclear
    program while sanctions continued and, more recently, oil prices dropped
    precipitously.

    There were two specific objectives: to slow progress at Natanz and other
    known and suspected nuclear facilities, and keep the pressure on a
    little-known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a scientist
    described in classified portions of American intelligence reports as
    deeply involved in an effort to design a nuclear warhead for Iran.

    Past American-led efforts aimed at Natanz had yielded little result.
    Several years ago, foreign intelligence services tinkered with
    individual power units that Iran bought in Turkey to drive its
    centrifuges, the floor-to-ceiling silvery tubes that spin at the speed
    of sound, enriching uranium for use in power stations or, with
    additional enrichment, nuclear weapons.

    A number of centrifuges blew up, prompting public declarations of
    sabotage by Iranian officials. An engineer in Switzerland, who worked
    with the Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been
    “turned” by American intelligence officials and helped them slip faulty
    technology into parts bought by the Iranians.

    What Mr. Bush authorized, and informed a narrow group of Congressional
    leaders about, was a far broader effort, aimed at the entire industrial
    infrastructure that supports the Iranian nuclear program. Some of the
    efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges. The details are
    closely held, for obvious reasons, by American officials. One official,
    however, said, “It was not until the last year that they got really
    imaginative about what one could do to screw up the system.”

    Then, he cautioned, “none of these are game-changers,” meaning that the
    efforts would not necessarily cripple the Iranian program. Others in the
    administration strongly disagree.

    In the end, success or failure may come down to how much pressure can be
    brought to bear on Mr. Fakrizadeh, whom the 2007 National Intelligence
    Estimate identifies, in its classified sections, as the manager of
    Project 110 and Project 111. According to a presentation by the chief
    inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, those were the
    names for two Iranian efforts that appeared to be dedicated to designing
    a warhead and making it work with an Iranian missile. Iranian officials
    say the projects are a fiction, made up by the United States.

    While the international agency readily concedes that the evidence about
    the two projects remains murky, one of the documents it briefly
    displayed at a meeting of the agency’s member countries in Vienna last
    year, from Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects, showed the chronology of a missile
    launching, ending with a warhead exploding about 650 yards above ground
    — approximately the altitude from which the bomb dropped on Hiroshima
    was detonated.

    The exact status of Mr. Fakrizadeh’s projects today is unclear. While
    the National Intelligence Estimate reported that activity on Projects
    110 and 111 had been halted, the fear among intelligence agencies is
    that if the weapons design projects are turned back on, will they know?

    David E. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York
    Times. Reporting for this article was developed in the course of
    research for “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the
    Challenges to American Power,” to be published Tuesday by Harmony Books.

  • US pressures Olmert against Iran, Gaza attacks – Time

    U.S. officials have asked Israel to refrain from launching any major military action in the region while Bush is president, Israeli sources told TIME magazine.  The next day, Prime Minister Olmert said the US has never pressed Israel not to attack Iran.

    TIME Monday, Nov. 24, 2008

    US Puts Pressure on Israel to Refrain from Attacks

    By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem

    U.S. officials have asked Israel to refrain from launching any major military action in the region during the waning days of the Bush presidency, Israeli sources have told TIME. Previously, some Israeli military officials had hinted to the media that if Israel were to carry out its threats to strike at Iranian nuclear installations, it might do so before Barack Obama enters the White House in January. But now a Defense Ministry official says, “We have been warned off.”

    The call for restraint was relayed to Israeli officials by senior U.S. counterparts, TIME’s sources say, and it is likely to be reinforced during Monday’s valedictory meeting in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George W. Bush.

  • Main evidence against Iran may be forged – IAEA questions ‘smoking laptop

    A ‘stolen laptop’ that contains the primary ‘evidence’ that Iran has a bomb program may be a forgery, new evidence reveals.  As with Iraq, the IAEA has investigated and dismissed almost all allegations about iran’s bomb.  Remaining questions are mostly to do with documents on the ‘stolen laptop’ that the US says it found somehwer and gave to the IAEA on condition that Iran should not be allowed to see the documents.  Iran has long said the laptop documents are forgeries, though better forgeries than the crude ‘evidence’ the US produced to ‘prove’ that Saddam bought uranium from Niger.   With no guarantee the laptop is authentic, the IAEA has been in two minds, but now evidence is emerging that the laptop is a fake.

    Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricated

    11/10/2008 @ 10:30 am

    Filed by Gareth Porter

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

    The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source — most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

    The new evidence of possible fraud has increased pressure within the IAEA secretariat to distance the agency from the laptop documents, according to a Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA, who spoke to RAW STORY on condition of anonymity.

    The laptop documents include what the IAEA has described in a published report as technical drawings of efforts to redesign the nosecone of the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile “to accommodate a nuclear warhead.” The documents are also said to include studies on the use of a high explosive detonation system, drawings of a shaft apparently to be used for nuclear tests, and studies on a bench-scale uranium conversion facility.

    These technical papers, along with some correspondence related to the alleged secret Iranian program — referred to by the IAEA as “alleged studies” — have been the primary basis during 2008 for the insistence by the US-led international coalition pushing for sanctions against Iran that the Iranian case must be kept going in the United Nations Security Council.

    Handwritten Notes

    At the center of the internal IAEA struggle is an Iranian firm named Kimia Maadan, which is portrayed in the documents as responsible for studies on a uranium conversion facility, called the “green salt” project, as part of the alleged nuclear weapons program under the Iranian Ministry of Defense.

    According to a February 2006 Washington Post article, the United States and its allies believe that Kimia Maadan is a front for the Iranian military.

    One of the communications included in the laptop documents – a letter allegedly sent to Kimia Maadan from an unnamed Iranian engineering firm in May 2003 – is at the center of the authenticity argument.

    This letter is described in the May 26, 2008 IAEA report as “a one page annotated letter of May 2003 in Farsi.” According to a US source who has been briefed on the matter, the letter has handwritten notes on it which refer to studies on the redesign of a missile reentry vehicle.

    Last January, however, Iran turned over to the IAEA a copy of the same May 2003 letter with no handwritten notes on it. This was confirmed by the director of the IAEA Safeguards Department, Olli Heinonen, during a February briefing for member states. Heinonen referred to “correspondence” related to Kimia Maadan that is “identical to that provided by Iran, with the addition of handwritten notes.”

    Notes on the Heinonen briefing, compiled by unnamed diplomats who attended it, were posted on the website of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

    The copy of the letter without the handwritten notes was part of a larger collection of documentation concerning Kimia Maadan provided to IAEA by Iran in response to a request for an explanation of that firm’s role in the management of the Iranian Gchine uranium mine.

    After the IAEA received the copy of the letter without notes from Iran, some officials began pushing for an acknowledgment by the Agency that there were serious questions about the whether the laptop documents were fabricated, according to the Vienna-based source close to the IAEA.

    “There was an effort to point out that the Agency isn’t in a position to authenticate the documents,” said the source.

    Heinonen and other IAEA Safeguards Department officials have continued, however, to defend the credibility of the document in question.

    According to an American source briefed on the dispute, the defenders of the authenticity of the version of the letter with the handwritten notes say that the appearance of the clean copy can be attributed to Kimia Maadan making multiple copies of the original which have been circulated to various staff members.

    Only an Ore-processing Plant

    Further evidence damaging to the credibility of the letter and the handwritten notes was provided to the atomic energy watchdog last January by the Iranian government. According to Iran, Kimia Maadan was not working for the Defense Ministry but for the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

    The new Iranian documentation, described in the February 22, 2008 IAEA report, proved to IAEA’s satisfaction that the Kimia Maadan Company had been created in May 2000 solely to carry out a project to design, procure and install equipment for an ore processing plant.

    The documents also showed that the core staff of Kimia Maadan was able to undertake the work on ore processing only because the nuclear agency had provided it with the technical drawings and reports as the basis for the contract.

    “Information and explanations provided by Iran were supported by the documentation, the content of which is consistent with the information already available to the agency,” the IAEA concluded.

    Marie Harff, a spokesperson for the CIA, declined to comment.

    Additional Doubts About the Letter

    Other questions surround the letter with the handwritten notes. The subject of the letter was Kimia Maadan’s inquiry to the engineering firm about procurement of a programmable logic control (PLC) system, according to the IAEA’s May 26 report.

    A PLC system is one of many types of technology that the United States has long sought to deny to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Iran had informed the IAEA even before 2006 that Kimia Maadan had assisted the AEOI in getting around that denial strategy by procuring various technologies for the planned uranium conversion facility at Esfahan.

    Given that Kimia Maadan’s role in procurement for the conversion facility was both unrelated to its technical work for the AEOI and part of a covert effort to get around U.S. restrictions, it seems unlikely that they would have made multiple copies of the letter. Even if multiple copies were made, the firm would certainly have taken normal security precautions for a document of that type, marking each copy with a number or name.

    A security procedure of that kind would have identified any missing copies. However, this was not the case with the 2003 letter. The United States, as its reason for refusing to provide a copy of the document to Iran, has argued that it would allow Iranian security personnel to identify the person who wrote the notes from their handwriting, according to the US source who has been briefed on the matter.

    Another problem with the handwritten letter is the absence of any logical link between the subject of the letter and the alleged work on redesign of the missile. PLC systems, which are used for automation of industrial processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, would have been irrelevant to the technical studies on redesigning the Shahab-3 missile.

    Other Documents Also Under Suspicion

    Other documents from the laptop collection, allegedly showing that Kimia Maadan was working closely with the team trying to redesigning the Shahab-3 missile, have also come under suspicion of fraud.

    The IAEA’s May 2008 report describes a flowsheet under Kimia Maadan’s name, showing a “process for bench scale conversion of uranium oxide” to UF4 (uranium tetraflouride), also known as “green salt.” The project number shown in the disputed documents for the “green salt” subproject is 5.13.

    However, Heinonen stated that the number given to the Gchine subproject was 5.15. According to the documents obtained by the IAEA from Iran last January, this was the number of the uranium ore processing project that was assigned in 1999 by the civilian AEOI, not by the Iranian Defense Ministry. This would mean that the author of the document used the project number 5.13 for the “green salt” subproject based on their knowledge of the AEOI numbering system and not on a military designation.

    In his February 25 briefing, Heinonen additionally referred to an alleged letter sent by Kimia Maadan – as manager of three subprojects – to the “missile re-entry vehicle” project, asking for a “technical opinion” on the plans for equipment for a proposed “green salt” conversion facility.

    However, it is difficult to understand why the team working on redesigning the missile would be asked for a “technical opinion” on equipment for a uranium conversion facility.

    A spokesperson for the State Department’s Office of Arms Control and International Security, which is responsible for IAEA affairs, said in an e-mail that specialists in the office “aren’t able to comment” on the subject of the intelligence documents now being considered by the IAEA.

    The IAEA also declined to comment.

    Toward a Showdown on the Contradictions

    As the contradictions between the new Iranian evidence and the laptop documents relating to Kimia Maadan became apparent, some IAEA officials argued that the Agency should distance itself from what they now suspect are forgeries. Despite that argument, the May 2008 report contained no reference to the issue.

    The next IAEA report, due out in mid-November, will include the first response by the Agency to a confidential 117-page Iranian critique of the laptop documents, according to the Vienna-based source.

    In the past, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has shown an ability to face off with the United States when evidence has been called into doubt. The infamous “Niger forgeries” – documents that purported to show an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the purchase of uranium oxide – were used by the White House as part of its case for war against Iraq.

    In response, ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council in December 2002, over three months before the US launched the Iraq War, warning that he believed the documents were forgeries and should not be cited as evidence of Iraqi intention to obtain nuclear weapons.

    When ElBaradei received no response from the Bush administration, he went public to debunk the Niger forgeries. In a speech at the United Nations in March 2003, he declared that the IAEA, after “thorough analysis,” had concluded that the documents alleging the purchase of uranium by Iraqi from Niger “are in fact not authentic.”

    The anomalies that have been revealed by the Iranian documents obtained from Iran last January may not be as obvious as the ones that made it clear the Niger documents were fabrications. Nevertheless, they appear to be red flags for IAEA analysts concerned with the issue.

    Suspicion has surrounded the “alleged studies” documents from the beginning, because the United States has refused to say who brought the collection to US intelligence four years ago.

    Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian who has authored numerous foreign policy analyses and is the author of the book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. In a 2006 article in the American Prospect, he revealed Iran’s spurned diplomatic outreach to the Bush Administration in 2003.

  • Women or machines may be solution to ‘manning bulge’ problems on Trident submarines

    Spending years underwater waiting to blow up a few hundred thousand people is not a very fun job,  so it is hard find crew for nuclear missile submarines.  The British Navy always has trouble getting men for this job (which of course is Necessary to Keep Us Free), but it will need even more crew when it starts to replace its old Trident boomers with a new generation of submarines – running two sets of boats concurrently will need more crew and will thus cause a ‘manning bulge’ .  0ne of the solutions being considered is to let women go to sea  with 50 or more Hiroshimas for the first time. (Another option is to use machines instead of women).   The  UK’s chief auditor has reported in his National Audit Office report on Trident replacement (pg 16 below) that there  are other ‘risk areas’ in the project such  as:
    the warhead: which might need to be replaced, but the UK and US are working on this,  and sorry, no cost figures are available at present.   (Such cooperation might well breach Article 1 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which criminalises  giving  nuclear weapons to other countries;  but that is not the Auditor’s problem)

    the submarine cost: well, we don’t know: the company has made an offer:  Somewhere between 12 and  20 billion pounds, (that’s a Lot of Money, so as the government auditor, we might look into it sometime in the future).  The auditor acknowledges a major problem: negotiating a good price is hard  when one company has a monopoly on building such submarines, and that company can  tell you when to throw away your old submarines, can charge what it likes, deliver when it likes, and blackmails you with the argument that  it has to build new submarines  now or else it’s submarine-building-experts will retire without teaching new engineers the tricks (unfinished…)….

    some quotes from the report:

    1.16  There are currently shortages of various trades … within the submarine branch of the Royal Navy. This problem is exacerbated by the introduction of the future class of submarines, since more crews will be required to manage the so-called ‘manning bulge’- the transition phase in which crews will be required to operate both Vanguard and the future class [of submarines] concurrently.

    1.17  Possible mitigation actions such as automating processes to reduce crew numbers and introducing female personnel are likely to have a major impact on both operating procedures and submarine design and therefore need to be taken while there is still scope for their incorporation in the latter. The Royal Navy is currently undertaking two studies to determine the likely impact of this issue. The Royal Navy’s Second Sea Lord is responsible for all naval crewing issues and is the owner of this risk, but the Senior Responsible Owner for the deterrent will have a key role in ensuring that the Royal Navy’s work is incorporated into the future deterrent timetable in a timely way.

  • Iran developing a nuclear weapon – Obama’s first press conference

    “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening”.   So said Barack Obama in his first press conference as Commander-in-Chief-Elect, contradicting what he has been told by US intelligence services  who say Iran halted any weapons program in 2003.   “Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think, is something that has to cease” Obama added;  it is worth noting here that Obama has appointed a Chief of Staff  who fought with the Israeli army and  whose father was a member of a terrorist organisation, (Irgun, a radical and violent Zionist group which attacked civilians and blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem).  Rahm Emanuel also reportedly wants to reintroduce the Draft compelling all young men to do 3 months civil defence training.

  • Pentagon must test nukes again or build new ones, threatens Gates

    US defence secretary Gates tells Congress to stop blocking funds for a new generation of nuclear weapons. “To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent.. without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program,”.   “In other words,” Wired’s Nathan Hodge remarks, “fund this thing, mothertruckers, or we start testing”.

    Defense Secretary demands Congress fund new nuclear weapons program

    John Byrne

    Published: Wednesday October 29, 2008

    Hints that the Pentagon will restart nuclear testing in effort to prod Congress to fund new generation of weapons

    After making a comment the same day saying that Russia must reduce its nuclear arsenal, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on the United States to begin testing its nuclear weapon program and fund a new generation of nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration is at odds with Congress on a law that would authorize the funding for a Reliable Replacable Warhead project — the so called “next generation” of nuclear weapon designs. “To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program,” Gates told the Carnegie Endowment

    “In other words,” Wired’s Nathan Hodge remarks, “fund this thing, mothertruckers, or we start testing. The United States concluded the last full-scale underground test of a nuke in 1992, and declared an official moratorium two years later; a return to testing would be a really big deal. In a speech last month on the limits of U.S. power, he alluded –  briefly – to the importance of RRW. That part of the speech earned few headlines, but for nuke-watchers, it was a telling moment.”

    “Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead,” Gates added. “The United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities. China and Russia have embarked on ambitious paths to design and field new weapons.”

    Congress has blocked funding for the initiative in the past. For the last two years, $89 million needed to determine the cost of building a new warhead was axed.

  • AP wrong: says Iran admitted having nuclear weapons programme in 2002

    Iran “admitted in 2002 that it had run a secret atomic weapons program for nearly two decades” Associated Press misinformed the world in a major story titled “Iran ends nuclear cooperation with UN nuclear arms probe”. There was no such admission nor evidence for such a claim. So after complaints AP later refined its secret weapons allegation to one of a secret nuclear program “in violation of its commitments”, which is also wrong, as Iran has been openly building a nuclear programme for years with IAEA and Western help – hardly secret – and it was under no IAEA “commitment” to announce its uranium enrichment plans before starting the program (ref?) . One wonders what else of this story to believe.

    Iran ends cooperation with UN nuclear arms probe

    Iran indicates end of cooperation with UN probe for secret nuclear weapons programs

    GEORGE JAHN
    AP News

    Jul 24, 2008 12:30 EST

    Iran signaled Thursday that it will no longer cooperate with U.N. experts probing for signs of clandestine nuclear weapons work, confirming the investigation is at a dead end a year after it began.

    The announcement from Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh compounded skepticism about denting Tehran’s nuclear defiance, just five days after Tehran stonewalled demands from six world powers that it halt activities capable of producing the fissile core of warheads.

    Besides demanding a suspension of uranium enrichment — a process that can create both fuel for nuclear reactors and payloads for atomic bombs — the six powers have been pressing Tehran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s probe.

    Iran, which is obligated as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty not to develop nuclear arms, raised suspicions about its intentions when it admitted in 2002 that it had run a secret atomic weapons program for nearly two decades in violation of its commitment.

    The Tehran regime insists it halted such work and is now only trying to produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity. It agreed on a “work plan” with the Vienna-based IAEA a year ago for U.N. inspectors to look into allegations Iran is still doing weapons work.

    At the time, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei hailed it as “a significant step forward” that would fill in the missing pieces of Tehran’s nuclear jigsaw puzzle — if honored by Iran. He brushed aside suggestions Iran was using the deal as a smoke screen to deflect attention from its continued defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand for a halt to uranium enrichment.

    The investigation ran into trouble just months after being launched. Deadline after deadline was extended because of Iranian foot-dragging. The probe, originally meant to be completed late last year, spilled into the first months of 2008, and beyond.

    Iran remains defiant. It dismisses as fabricated the evidence supplied by the U.S. and other members of the IAEA’s governing board purportedly backing allegations that Iranians continue to work on nuclear weapons.

    Officials say that among the evidence given to the IAEA are what seem to be Iranian draft plans to refit missiles with nuclear warheads; explosives tests that could be used to develop a nuclear detonator; and a drawing showing how to mold uranium metal into the shape of warheads. There are also questions about links between Iran’s military and civilian nuclear facilities.

    On Thursday, Aghazadeh appeared to signal that his country was no longer prepared even to discuss the issue with the IAEA.

    Investigating such allegations “is outside the domain of the agency,” he said after meeting with ElBaradei. Any further queries on the issue “will be dealt with in another way,” he said, without going into detail.

    Britain, one of those suspicious of Iran’s nuclear activities, was critical.

    “We are concerned by reports that Iran is refusing to cooperate with the IAEA on allegations over nuclear weapons,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement. “The IAEA has raised serious concerns over Iran’s activities with a possible military dimension. If Iran is serious about restoring international confidence in its intentions, it must address these issues.”

    The IAEA asked in vain for explanations from Iran, and its last report in May said Iran might be withholding information on whether it tried to make nuclear arms. Reflecting ElBaradei’s frustration, the report used language described by one senior U.N. official as unique in its direct criticism of Tehran.

    Aghazadeh’s comments Thursday appeared to jibe with those of diplomats familiar with the probe who told The Associated Press that the IAEA had run into a dead end.

    A senior diplomat on Thursday attributed Tehran’s intransigence in part to anger over a multimedia presentation by IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen to the agency’s 35 board members based on intelligence about the alleged weapons work. The diplomat, like others, agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because his information was confidential.

    Tehran dismisses the suspicions of the U.S. and allies, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday again vowed that his country would not “retreat one iota” from pursuing uranium enrichment.

    On Saturday, a U.S. diplomat had participated in talks with Iran held in Geneva, raising expectations that a compromise might be reached under which Iran would agree to temporarily stop expansion of enrichment activities. In exchange, the six world powers — the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China — would hold off on adopting new U.N. sanctions against Iran.

    But participants at Geneva said Iranian negotiators skirted the freeze issue despite the presence of U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday accused Iran of not being serious at the Geneva talks. She warned that all six nations were serious about a two-week deadline for Iran to agree to freeze suspect activities and start negotiations or else be hit with a fourth set of U.N. penalties.

    Aghazadeh, who is also head of Iran’s atomic agency, played down the international complaints, but he also evaded a direct answer on whether Tehran would give any ground on an enrichment freeze.

    “Both sides are carefully studying the concerns and expectations of both sides,” he told reporters.

    ___

    Associated Press writer David Stringer in London contributed to this report.