Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricated

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.

Ohhh, really, I wonder who could have possibly fabricated those documents? Could it be the same folks who fabricated the Niger Yellow Cake documents?? Anyone care to hazard a guess as to who the culprits could be???

Duplicity undermining NPT: IAEA chief

The major powers are acting contrary to the spirit of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) because they are modernizing their arsenals rather than making efforts to scrap them, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei stated on the sidelines of a 145-nation IAEA general assembly meeting.

That's because the underlying intent of the NPT was never to eliminate the nuclear weapons of the nations that have them but to stop non-nuclear nations from acquiring them...

Afghanistan wins spot on IAEA board after Syria withdraws

Afghanistan won a place on the 35-member board of the UN atomic watchdog on Friday, after Syria pulled out of the race for the seat. Syria had been competing with Afghanistan for a spot in the body that oversees the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that had become vacant for the so-called Middle East and South Asia (MESA) group after Pakistan's one-year term expired.

IAEA "puts Israeli nukes on agenda"

The move was initially met with protests by the US and Canada but the two countries had to back down from their position after they realized that other member states of the IAEA meeting's presidential board would not support their stance, an informed source told Fars News Agency on Monday.

Finally, but don't expect much to come of this...

West, Islamic nations split at nuclear meeting

As in the past two years, Islamic IAEA members are expected to put forward a resolution urging all Mideast nations to refrain from testing or developing nuclear arms and urging nuclear weapons states "to refrain from any action" hindering a Mideast nuclear-free zone.

Well, isn't that the stated policy of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty? What's so controversial about that?? Ohhhh, I see - Israel has nuclear weapons and they won't agree "to refrain from testing or developing nuclear arms...," and the "West" won't pressure them to change their policy. Now, I get it...

IAEA confirms nuclear Iran on right track

"The agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran," read the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear activities.

IAEA Chief: Iran Could Make Nuke In 6 Months

"If Iran wants to turn to the production of nuclear weapons, it must leave the NPT, expel the IAEA inspectors, and then it would need at least, considering the number of centrifuges and the quantity of uranium Iran has...It would need at least six months to one year," ElBaradei said. " Therefore, Iran will not be able to reach the point where we would wake up one morning to an Iran with a nuclear weapon," he said.

Notice the headline - "Iran Could Make Nuke in 6 Months"!!! - That's the shock effect - but the really important part of the statement is the last sentence!!!

"Ball of fire" if Iran attacked: IAEA chief

"A military strike (against Iran) would in my opinion be worse than anything else... It would transform the Middle East region into a ball of fire," ElBaradei said in an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

It would be pure insanity to even consider attacking Iran. And, that's why the Zionists will probably do it - they are a bunch of blithering idiots playing with, as Ahmedinejad explained, razors blades.

Russia warns against using force on Iran

“I believe that the international community wants to be very sure that whatever unilateral action is being prepared under the pretext of implementing the decisions of the IAEA and the Security Council should be really very factually substantiated. We have been repeatedly asking our American and Israeli colleagues, who insist that Iran is certainly involved in making an atomic bomb, to provide factual information about this matter. So far we have seen none,” he added.

ElBaradei doubts Syrians had ability to develop nuclear facility

"We have no evidence that Syria has the human resources that would allow it to carry out a large nuclear program. We do not see Syria having nuclear fuel," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamad ElBaradei told Al-Arabiya television Tuesday.

A few words for Mr. Sarkozy

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed that he is ready to travel to Tehran to discuss a civilian nuclear partnership if the country improves its cooperation with the UN atomic watchdog."

IAEA: US Iran Report Matches UN Agency

"A U.S. intelligence review that concludes Iran stopped developing a nuclear weapons program in 2003 is consistent with the U.N. atomic watchdog agency's own findings and "should help to "defuse the current crisis," the organization's chief said Tuesday."

In other words, Iran, like Iraq were telling the truth all along. The only ones lying during this entire period have been Bush and his neo-Zionists cabal.

Dear Americans, PLEASE, don't stop to think!

"Yes, Iran is after a nuclear bomb that is why the IAEA has released a report saying Tehran has been truthful about its nuclear activities. And of course the US government is against nuclear bombs and would never think of using them. Ask any Japanese about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they will tell you all about it."

Evidence on Iran doesn't seem to matter

"Apart from the eight nuclear weapons powers (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel), four other countries already have plants on their territory for "enriching and reprocessing uranium" under IAEA safeguards: Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil. Argentina, Australia and South Africa are also building or actively considering uranium enrichment facilities, again under IAEA safeguards. So there was some rapid back-pedaling at the White House when a journalist inquired if all these countries are also seeking nuclear weapons."

Developing Countries protest Israeli attacks on IAEA

"Developing nations have protested to the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing board over Israel's accusations that IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei was showing complacency over Iran's nuclear ambitions."

The Nuclear Cowboys

"The Bush administration's decision NOT to share its intelligence on the Syrian site with the IAEA, and thereby encourage and support the international agency's aggressive inspection and evaluation of this alleged threat to peace, was another demonstration of the contempt in which the present US administration holds the UN Organization.," wrote former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Ray Close, in an e-mail to IPS.

The Bush administration's decision NOT to share its intelligence on the Syrian site with the IAEA, is also a demonstration of the possibility that there was NO intelligence to share in the first place.

Déjà vu all over again

The US is smearing IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei for not finding evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons. Sound familiar?

by Ian Williams - Nov 3, 2007

When it comes to Iran's nuclear capabilities, whose word would you rather take: that of a Nobel prize-winning head of an international agency specializing in nuclear issues who was proved triumphantly right about Iraq, or that of a bunch of belligerent neocons who make no secret of their desire to whack Iran at the earliest opportunity and who made such a pigs ear of Iraq?

That is the stark choice facing the sane people of the world, given the smearing of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei for not joining the hysterical lynch mob building up against Iran. Criticised by Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration, it is uncannily reminiscent of the slurs against him and UN weapons inspector Hans Blix in the run up to the invasion of Iraq - and we should remember that the US vindictively tried to unseat him afterwards for not joining in the lying game.

ElBaradei is hardly acting as cheerleader for the Iranians. He says that his inspectors have not seen "any concrete evidence that there is a parallel military program," though he could not yet swear to its absence. But he does believe that our issues with Iran can be resolved through negotiations - in which it would help if the US were not implicitly threatening war. But it looks as though we have reached a similar stage to when Saddam let in the inspectors. When they found no WMDs Washington cried foul, ordered the UN inspectors out and sent the troops in. The US and its allies will not accept anything short of regime change in Teheran - no matter what ordinary Iranians might want and what the IAEA says.

The only difference from last time is that France has defected, and France's opposition to the war in Iraq was as much because of Saddam's oil contracts with Total and Elf-Aquitaine as any deep attachment to international law. Teheran should sign a contract immediately!

There are, of course, several separate issues here. One is whether Iran has the right to enrich uranium. The second is whether it is abusing the putative right to build nuclear weapons. A third is whether the nuclear issue is not just some sort of White House feint, since we all know that if the shooting starts, it will really be about fighting terrorism, liberating gays and women, restoring democracy and taking down a major rival in the region to both Saudi Arabia and Israel - or any permutation of the above.

On the first question, stupid though it is, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not ban countries from reprocessing and purifying uranium. It should have done, and it should have allowed more intrusive inspections, but it doesn't, and one reason for that is that the US, under the influence of the people who now want to cite non-proliferation against Iran, fought against attempts to strengthen the treaty. These are the same people, in fact, who have successfully fought against the senate ratifying the comprehensive test ban treaty.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's maladroit diplomacy led to Iran being outmanoeuvred. His comments on Israel and the Holocaust, no matter whether interpreted correctly or not, have made it difficult for many countries to support him. The US got a resolution against Iran through the IAEA council calling on Iran to stop its uranium reprocessing, largely by promising council member India a free pass for developing nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and with the enthusiastic support of Israel, the only definite nuclear state in the Middle East.

The US then took that IAEA council resolution to the UN security council, whose word, whether Iran likes it or not, is law under the UN charter, even though it is manifestly a political rather than a judicial body. (The law is not always just, and that goes for international law as well). It does not help Iran as much as it should that Washington, a major scofflaw in the international field, is once again talking piously about the need to enforce UN resolutions, with its own interpretation and its own timetable - just as was the case with Iraq.

Iran is playing a dangerous game. Most countries have deep reservations about what the US, France and, to a lesser extent, the UK are up to, but few of them are prepared to go to the wall, diplomatically, let alone militarily, for the ayatollahs.

Iran should accept the additional and more intrusive inspections that it did before, and throw open its program to the IAEA inspectors, but the war talk in Washington and Jerusalem gives it a plausible excuse not to, since it would be tantamount to offering them a list of targets.

Of course it is difficult to support someone like Ahmadinejad, even when he does for once have a point in the nuclear stand-off. But we can support ElBaradei and the IAEA, as the only sane voices around. With enemies such as ElBaradei has marshalling against him, he must be right.

Experts: No evidence of Iranian nuclear-weapons program

by Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers - November 4, 2007

WASHINGTON — Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

"Iran is seeking a nuclear capability ... that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability," Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.

"I don't think that anyone right today thinks they're working on a bomb," said another U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. Outside experts say the operative words are "right today." They say Iran may have been actively seeking to create a nuclear-weapons capacity in the past and still could break out of its current uranium-enrichment program and start a weapons program. They too lack definitive proof, but cite a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Bush's rhetoric seems hyperbolic compared with the measured statements by his senior aides and outside experts.

"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said Oct. 17 at a news conference.

"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney warned on Oct 23. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

Bush and Cheney's allegations are under especially close scrutiny because their similar allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program proved to be wrong. Nevertheless, there are many reasons to be skeptical of Iran's claims that its nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes, including the country's vast petroleum reserves, its dealings with a Pakistani dealer in black-market nuclear technology and the fact that it concealed its uranium-enrichment program from a U.N. watchdog agency for 18 years.

"Many aspects of Iran's past nuclear program and behavior make more sense if this program was set up for military rather than civilian purposes," Pierre Goldschmidt, a former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director general, said in a speech Oct. 30 at Harvard University.

If conclusive proof exists, however, Bush hasn't revealed it. Nor have four years of IAEA inspections.

"I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear-weapons program going on right now," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei asserted in an interview Oct. 31 with CNN.

"There is no smoking-gun proof of work on a nuclear weapon, but there is enough evidence that points in that direction," said Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation controls.

New light may be shed when the IAEA reports this month on whether Iran is fulfilling an August accord to answer all outstanding questions about the nuclear-enrichment program it long concealed from the U.N. watchdog agency.

Its report is expected to focus on Iran's work with devices that spin uranium hexafluoride gas to produce low-enriched uranium for power plants or highly enriched uranium for weapons, depending on the duration of the process.

Iran asserts that it's working only with the P1, an older centrifuge that it admitted buying in 1987 from an international black-market network headed by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

But IAEA inspectors determined that Iran failed to reveal that it had obtained blueprints for the P2, a centrifuge twice as efficient as the P1, from the Khan network in 1995.

Iranian officials say they did nothing with the blueprints until 2002, when they were given to a private firm that produced and tested seven modified P2 parts, then abandoned the effort.

IAEA inspectors, however, discovered that Iran sought to buy thousands of specialized magnets for P2s from European suppliers, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last year that research on the centrifuges continued.

The IAEA has been stymied in trying to discover the project's scope, fueling suspicions that the Iranian military may be secretly running a P2 development program parallel to the civilian-run P1 program at Natanz.

Other issues driving concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons:

PROJECT 111

The CIA turned over to the IAEA last year thousands of pages of computer simulations and documents — purportedly from a defector's laptop — that indicated that Iranian experts studied mounting a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

The laptop also contained drawings and notes on sophisticated detonators and conventional high explosives arrayed in a ring — the shape used to trigger nuclear weapons — and implicated a firm linked to Iran's military in uranium-enrichment studies.

The documents included drawings of a 1,200-foot-deep underground shaft apparently designed to confine a nuclear test explosion. Iran denounced the materials as "politically motivated and baseless," but promised to cooperate with an IAEA investigation into so-called Project 111 once other questions are settled. U.S., French, German and British intelligence officials think the materials are genuine. "I wouldn't go to war over this, but it's reason for suspicion," Fitzpatrick said. "It hasn't been explained." Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California who emigrated from Iran in 1978 and has analyzed Iran's nuclear program closely, dismissed the materials as "totally not believable." Noting how carefully Iranian intelligence agencies monitor the program and the borders, he said, "If the laptop did exist, I find it hard to believe that its absence wasn't noticed for so long that somebody could take it out of Iran."

THE 15-PAGE DOCUMENT

ElBaradei revealed in November 2005 that Iran had a document supplied by the Khan network on casting and milling uranium metal into hemispheres. Uranium hemispheres have no application in power plants, but form the explosive cores of nuclear weapons. Iran denied asking for the document or doing anything with it. It barred the IAEA from making copies but agreed to have it placed under seal. IAEA investigators have been interviewing Khan network members to verify Iran's version of how it got the document. They also have been looking into whether Iran received a Chinese warhead design from the Khan network. Libya, which bought the same materials Iran did, had the design.

POLONIUM-210

Iran has failed since 2003 to satisfy IAEA inquiries about experiments it conducted from 1989 to 1993 that produced Polonium-210.

Polonium-210 is a highly radioactive substance that has limited civilian applications but is used in warheads to initiate the fission chain reaction that results in a nuclear blast.

URANIUM MINE

IAEA inspectors want to know why and how the same military-linked company that's been implicated in the laptop materials was able to develop a uranium mine and a milling facility in a year when Iran has said the firm has limited experience in such work.

NUCLEAR POWER VS. OIL AND GAS

Many U.S. and European officials dispute Iran's claim that it needs to enrich uranium for nuclear power plants. They point out that the only Iranian nuclear power plant under construction is being built by Russia, which has an agreement to supply it with low-enriched uranium fuel for 10 years.

Moreover, they contend that Iran doesn't have enough uranium to provide fuel for the lifetimes of the seven to 10 civilian reactors it says it needs to meet the demands of its growing population. It would be far cheaper for Iran to expand domestic consumption of natural gas, of which it has the world's second-largest reserves, and oil, of which it has the world's third-largest reserves, according to a study by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But Sahimi argued that given the skyrocketing price of oil and natural gas, it makes more sense for Iran to export as much petroleum and natural gas as possible and fill its power needs with nuclear-generated electricity. "The price of uranium since 2001 has increased by 800 percent. Iran's presently known resources can supply enriched uranium for seven reactors for 15 years," he said. "It would be foolish not to go after a domestic uranium facility ... given that, the price of enriched uranium, and the political obstacles and hindrance (Iran faces) if it decides to rely on outside suppliers."

IAEA asks for information on any Syrian nuclear plans

Interesting how the Zionist owned MSM have been reporting at every turn that Israel "attacked Syria's nuclear reactor." If Israel says it, it must be true - what a joke!

by Yossi Melman, Haaretz - Oct 15, 2007

The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday broke its silence over an Israel Air Force strike last month that reportedly targeted a Syrian nuclear facility, and urged any parties with information on Damascus' nuclear plans to come forward.

"The IAEA has no information about any undeclared nuclear facility in Syria and no information about recent reports," said an announcement by the IAEA.

"We would obviously investigate any relevant information coming our way. The IAEA secretariat expects any country having information about nuclear-related activities in another country to provide that information to the IAEA."

The statement went on to say that the IAEA hopes any country with information on the undeclared nuclear activities in another state would pass it on to the agency.

According to the IAEA announcement, the agency is in contact with Syrian officials in order to verify the credibility of "recent reports," apparently alluding to U.S. and Israeli claims that the IAF targeted a Syrian nuclear facility in September.

Shortly after the IAF strike was confirmed, Haaretz contacted the IAEA to inquire as to whether the atomic watchdog agency will investigate the reports of Syrian nuclear activity. The IAEA replied that it had no intention of doing so.

The IAEA statement on Monday is specifically in response to this past weekend's New York Times report according to which the IAF had bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor which was in the initial stages of construction and was modeled after a North Korean reactor.

Syria is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which prohibits nations from pursuing nuclear research for military purposes. The few nuclear facilities that it maintains in the country are operated under the supervision of the IAEA.

Yet, according to the safeguard agreement, a government is not obligated to report to the IAEA on the start of construction of a nuclear reactor. A state is required to report on the reactor once building reaches the final stages, or a reasonable amount of time prior to the reactor's activation.
In the event that Syria's reactor was built for civilian purposes and for research only, then Damascus would not be in violation of its commitments to the IAEA and to the NNPT, even if it did not report on the start of its construction.

Syria has belonged to the 144-nation IAEA since 1963 and has one declared, small research reactor under agency safeguards. It has denied hiding any nuclear activity from the IAEA or having an atomic bomb programme.

Since 2003, the IAEA has been investigating past nuclear secrecy in Iran, a member state and ally of Syria.

Iran has pledged to clarify the scope of its programme by the end of 2007 in an effort to avoid being hit with harsh UN sanctions over its refusal to stop enriching uranium, a process Western powers suspect Iran is channelling into bombmaking. Iran says it only wants an alternative source of electricity.

The New York Times said the targeted Syrian facility appeared to have been much further from completion than an Iraqi reactor the Israeli air force destroyed in 1981 in an attack echoed by the incident last month.

It said U.S. officials were divided over the Syria attack, with some seeing it as premature since the site looked years away from being used to produce spent nuclear fuel that could eventually be used for bomb-grade plutonium.

It remained unclear how far Syria had progressed with the alleged plant before the attack, what role North Korea might have played and whether a case could be made that it was intended to produce electricity.

U.S. and foreign officials refused to be drawn on whether they suspected North Korea of having sold or given the plans to Syria, but some said it was possible a transfer of technology occurred several years ago.

Iran Says Will Work With IAEA to Avert Sanctions

Damn, Damn, Damn! - High Level White House Sourse

By REUTERS - Sept 30, 2007

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will continue its cooperation with the U.N. atomic watchdog to defuse a row over its nuclear programme, an Iranian official said on Sunday, accusing some Western states of trying to disrupt the process.

Six world powers agreed on Friday to delay a vote on tougher U.N. sanctions on Iran until late November at the earliest, to wait for reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and European Union negotiator Javier Solana.

The United States and France had sought swifter action to step up economic and political pressure on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, which the West suspects is aimed at developing nuclear arms. Iran denies those charges.

"The process that certain radical countries have followed so far is to disrupt the positive climate that has been put in place through the cooperation of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the agency," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

"That has not helped them, therefore they have been forced to be patient," he told a news conference, adding that other states were backing Iran's cooperation with the IAEA.

He was speaking at a news conference broadcast by Iran's English-language Press TV, which translated Hosseini's comments.

"To put a stop to possible sanctions, we are going to continue working with the agency and our diplomatic efforts will continue unabated," Hosseini added.

Foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain asked Solana to hold more talks with Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, while the IAEA tries to clear up doubts about past Iranian nuclear activities.

The decision to make another stab at the European Union-led diplomacy while brandishing the threat of fresh sanctions if it fails reflected a compromise among the major powers.