The Spin Cycle Of Doom (Updated With A New Rinse)

By Cernig

I said yesterday we'd be hearing more about the dreaded Laptop Of Doom and its alleged evidence of Iran's nuke plans, as provided by the MeK terror group to US intelligence. And lo and behold, today the WaPo has a report on exactly that, saying details contained on the laptop prove Iran hasn't been entirely honest about it's weapon activities. It's one of those "when did you stop beating your wife?" situations. But the WaPo report isn't being entirely honest either, it seems.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk, writes:

today, Warrick and Lynch have a story based on notes from Heinonen’s briefing — a good bit of reporting — suggesting that the IAEA had collected “corroborating evidence” from the intelligence agencies of several countries (echo chamber warning) and presenting some new information.

Unfortuantely, the example of “new” information that Warrick and Lynch provide, pertains to documents “described studies on modifying Iran’s Shahab missile to allow it to accommodate a large warhead, which would detonate 600 meters above its target.”

This is not new. Those details were first reported in March 2005 by Carla Anne Robbins and later recycled by Robbins in July 2005 and then David Sanger and Bill Broad in the New York Times.

Indeed, that information, as Robbins reported in 2005, was briefed to the IAEA by Bob Joseph.

So, two questions: What was in the 2008 briefing that wasn’t in the 2005 briefing? And, what else is in those notes?

I'm not sure where Dr. Lewis gets the impression that presenting old news as new and scarier news is "a good bit of reporting". Absent answers to Dr Lewis' two questions - and even more importantly, prehaps, knowing the identity of their source who supposedly took these notes at an IAEA briefing - it looks very much to me like yet another case of press stenographers catapulting the propaganda by a process of rinse and repeat.

Update I see the NYT's Sanger and Broad have their version of the story out too. Like the WaPo version, it concentrates on the warhead details that, as Dr. Lewis points out, were last recycled by Sanger and Broad in 2005.

At this point, the really big question is "who is this un-named diplomat who has so kindly let both WaPo and NYT use his notes -- and what's his agenda?"

Update 2 Siddharth, in comments at Dr. Lewis' blog, puts his finger on the real story:

And wonderful timing too, for all those “notes” being made available to NYT, WaPo and Reuters, just in time for Monday’s big UNSC sanctions vote. In my book – and I speak as a journalist – being handed over notes/documents etc (esp. by a party with a patent interest in the contents being reported) is not “good reporting”. What makes it even worse is that Schulte hands over shady documents to IAEA, gets old Oli to brief everyone, takes notes of said briefing, and hands over said notes to gullible hacks. Much more effective than directly plugging a line to the media.

Go on, someone in the press - ask Schulte if he was indeed the Masked Diplomat.

The Laptop Of Doom

By Cernig

For the first time, Iran has openly said it believes the infamous "smoking laptop" to be full of MeK terror group propaganda. Gareth Porter does sterling work tracking the laptop's provenance - which is to say US intel just about got it from a guy in a bar.

those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce "green salt", technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyse, but the United States had refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group".

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organisation," the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, U.S. officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organisation, the MEK was a favourite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilise Iran.

You're going to be hearing a lot more about this laptop's alleged revelations, as it's the single biggest remaining item of "evidence" in the neocon war-hyper's arsenal. But it looks very like any real information contained on it relates to iran's now-defunct pre-2003 weapons program and that data has been spiced up by the inclusion of propaganda planted by one of the links in the provenance chain.

Experts - IAEA Successfully Disarming Iran

By Cernig

Nuclear non-proliferation experts Ray Takeyh and Joseph Cirincione have penned an op-ed for Britain's Financial Times which says that the recent IAEA report shows that the Agency has been successful in ensuring that iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program going forward.

The investigation and inspections – even the limited ones the IAEA is currently able to conduct – have, in effect, shut down direct weapons work and resolved many of the outstanding historical questions.

...the IAEA investigations have produced enough circumstantial evidence to support the view that Iran probably conducted nuclear weapons research in the past. But the evidence to date also indicates, as the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded last November, that Iran stopped this direct weapons work. The path now is to recognise this success, deepen it, find a way for Iran to come clean safely on its past work and to prevent Iran from developing capabilities that could allow it to produce weapon material in the next decade.

Mr ElBaradei has disproved the notion that Iran’s nuclear strategy is immutable. Despite its apparent solidarity, there are divisions within the theocratic regime on the urgency of the nuclear programme. It is true that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad and his militant allies’ calculations are susceptible to neither offers of incentives nor threats of force. However, for the more tempered members of the ruling elite, the nuclear issue is considered within the context of international relations. Indeed, the fact that Iran has suspended the weapon design component of its programme since 2003 and is largely complying with the IAEA “work plan” reflects the propensity of the state to adhere to certain limits.

The best means of diminishing the hardliners is for the US and its European allies to offer Iran a chance for a resumed relationship...the west should appreciate that a nuanced diplomacy of reconciliation could both regulate Iran’s nuclear programme and help stabilise the Middle East. It is the much maligned Mr ElBaradei that has paved the way for success.

Others, including Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, had already come to the same conclusions about what is actually in the "smoking laptop" - that the data therein relate to that earlier and now cancelled phase of experimentation that never actually got as far as using nuclear materials and was, in many ways, deeply flawed in any case. That is, the Iranian designs as contained in the laptop wouldn't have worked. But this view stands in stark contrast to the opinions from the neocon mothership, the American Enterprise Institute, where they called the IAEA report a "whitewash"...mainly, it must be said, for not insisting on war with Iran right now.

However, Russia is now indicating that it may support further sanctions on Iran because it is worried about Iran's heavy water plant. Heavy water reactors can be used to breed plutonium (from uranium-238) or uranium-233 (from thorium-232) and actually make it easier to extract weapons-grade material than conventional uranium enrichment techniques, so they are seen as major non-proliferation risks. But they also enable natural, un-enriched, uranium to be used in reactors - making them ideal for a small nation with limited resources to spend which is worried about being forced into dependency on other states for fuel. It may be that Iran's heavy water plant is a worrying risk - or it may just be that Russia is keen to see Iran locked in to a very profitable dependency on the larger nation for nuclear purposes. As usual with Iran's nuclear plans, there's a best-case and a worst-case scenario and which one you believe will depend on your own opinion of Iran's motivations.

Marching In Lockstep

By Cernig

When the IAEA issued its latest report on Iran's nuclear program on Friday, there wasn't much noise about it from the right side of the blogosphere. They were too busy worrying about Obama's patriotism and McCain's "Cheney".

But now that the neocon mothership - the American Enterprise Institute - have spoken via the WSJ, they're all falling over themselves to get in lockstep and call it a "whitewash".

The truth, however, is that the IAEA's new report is a carefully parsed compromise between what the IAEA knows, what it's being told but cannot itself verify and political pressure from these very same neocons. It included an urgent call to Iran to agree implementation of a new Additional Protocol and gave the UNSC good cause to proceed with new sanction should it wish to. It repeated the good news that Iran's current centrifuges and their low-enriched product cannot be diverted to produce highly-enriched uranium useable for a weapon without IAEA knowledge.

It also connected the infamous "smoking taptop" to the Iranian nuclear program which ended in 2003 according to the last American NIE.

What the neocons are unhappy about is that it didn't contain a call for war. If any report on Iran's nuclear program doesn't contain that, it's a whitewash that makes the producing agency "irrelevant" according to them.

Could they be more transparent?

IAEA Iran Report Released Today (Updated)

By Cernig

There's no doubt about it - scary stories about Iran's nuclear program sell newspapers and encourage internet click-throughs. But the bubble of scary stories in advance of today's IAEA report has been unusually lurid.

Several hawkish blogs today are referencing an article from Der Spiegel magazine's science correspondent which purports to discuss a European study saying iran could have a nuclear weapon far more quickly than suggested by the recent American NIE or by the IAEA. In fact, Der Spiegel claims the study shows Iran could have a nuke by the end of the year. The key graphs:

As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.

For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency — just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.

For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn’t even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad’s assertion in November.

But there are a couple of problems with Der Spiegel's account.

Firstly, it sidesteps entirely the IAEA surveillance and seal on Iran’s centrifuges and LEU product. The IAEA guarantees those cannot be redirected to HEU production without its knowledge. It also says that the study produces a worst case estimate based on 100% efficient centrifuges when we know from IAEA reports that Iran has never managed better than 20% efficiency. You cannot get there (enough HEU for a bomb in the timeline the study suggests) from here, so any such estimates are working from null data.

But secondly, there are reasons at the moment to doubt Der Spiegel's characterisation of this study. The JRC is committed to a promise that reports are meant "to be accessible to interested non-specialists and the media," yet I cannot find any such study on their website.

The only "project to improve control of nuclear materials" currently ongoing is one run from their Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), which is indeed based in Ipsa, Italy. The webpage for that program - the 4th ESARDA Nuclear Safeguards and Non Proliferation course - doesn't mention any such program either. It's described as "a chance to all students to learn more about the general background of safguards legislation, nuclear fuel cycle, verification technologies and the evolution of safguards." That doesn't exactly sound like something such a major study would be prepared for, but it's the only current program which fits Der Spiegel's description.

The nearest I can find to any study like the one Der Spiegel describes is is a reference to study papers referencing an imaginary state and based on various actual nations’ nuclear programs - intended as an exercise for students of non-proliferation techniques in preparing an inspection regime to prevent said hypothetical nation from producing a weapon. Could Der Spiegel, in a zeal to print "news" have so mischaracterised a fairly innocuous study? I've emailled the JRC asking them if they can identify and provide a copy of the study the Spiegel article referenced. If they reply, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I noted the other day that there's been other lurid accusations over Iran's nuclear program in the past week. At the UNSC, unaligned nations want to take the IAEA report into consideration before drafting the UNSC's next resolution on Iran's program, but the US and European nations have already drafted the resolution they want voted on before seeing the IAEA's report. It may well be that this rash of accusations is part of a PR program to gain US and European public acceptance for such a move.

The IAEA's report itself is pretty much as expected. It says that Iran has been co-operating more fully but not fully enough and that questions still remain. However, it also says - yet again - that no smoking gun or even damp squib has been found. The report doesn't seem to be available online just yet but El Baradei's statement is.

"Our task in Iran is to make sure that the Iranian nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes. We are at it for the last five years. In the last four months, in particular, we have made quite good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, with the exception of one issue, and that is the alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the past. We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran´s enrichment programme. We have made good progress, with still one issue on our agenda and I call on Iran to act as actively as possible, as fast as possible, for me to be able (to ensure) that all issues, that have to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, have been clarified.

"In addition to our work, to clarify Iran´s past nuclear activities, we have to make sure, naturally, that Iran´s current activities are also exclusively for peace purposes and for that we have been asking Iran to conclude the so called Additional Protocol, which gives us the additional authority to visit places, additional authority to have additional documents, to be able to provide assurance, not only that Iran´s declared activities are for peaceful purposes but that there are no undeclared nuclear activities. On that score, Iran in the last few months has provided us with visits to many places, that enable us to have a clearer picture of Iran´s current programme. However, that is not, in my view, sufficient. We need Iran to implement the Additional Protocol. We need to have that authority as a matter of law.

Those alleged weaponization activities are the ones contained on the dodgy laptop US intelligence gained when an Iranian walked in with it, after supposedly getting it from a burglar. That, according to El Baradei, is pretty much all that's left available to those who continue to demonise Iran.

David "Judy In Drag" Sanger at the NYT describes that information as having "strongly suggested the country had experimented with technology to make a nuclear weapon". But other reports are more sceptical.

The newest U.S nuclear information, including some intelligence declassified for sharing with the agency, was handed over to IAEA Deputy Director Oli Heinonen last Friday, just a few weeks after a first batch of material was forwarded by the U.S., said the diplomats.

But much of it shed little new light on what the U.S. says have been attempts by Iran to develop nuclear weapons. "It's not the amount but the quality that counts," said one of the diplomats who was dismissive of the new U.S. file.

Another diplomat said senior agency officials also had dismissed the information as relatively insignificant and coming too late.

Several of the diplomats suggested the U.S. was disingenuous in providing such a large amount of what they described as questionable information just days before ElBaradei was to complete his report. But a diplomat familiar with the U.S. position said Washington was acting in good faith and trying to help the agency.

For its part, Iran did not respond to an invitation issued by Heinonen to its experts to look at some of the information the U.S. approved for sharing with Tehran, despite earlier pledges to do so.

One has to wonder whether that Iranian refusal points to skullduggery or just to Iranian hardliners being stupidly hardline. I'd suggest the latter simply on the basis of Occam's Razor.

Update Andy Grotto at The Arms Control Wonk has kindly provided a link to a PDF copy of the IAEA report. Andy's take is worth a read, as are the comments to his post.

I want to flag up what for me were key graphs in the report, though.

54. The one major remaining issue relevant to the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme is the alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle. This is a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear programme. The Agency was able to show some relevant documentation to Iran on 3–5 February 2008 and is still examining the allegations made and the statements provided by Iran in response. Iran has maintained that these allegations are baseless and that the data have been fabricated. The Agency’s overall assessment requires, inter alia, an understanding of the role of the uranium metal document, and clarifications concerning the procurement activities of some military related institutions still not provided by Iran. The Agency only received authorization to show some further material to Iran on 15 February 2008. Iran has not yet responded to the Agency’s request of that same date for Iran to view this additional documentation on the alleged studies. In light of the above, the Agency is not yet in a position to determine the full nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. However, it should be noted that 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. The Director General has urged Iran to engage actively with the Agency in a more detailed examination of the documents available about the alleged studies which the Agency has been authorized to show to Iran. [Emphasis Mine - C]

I'm going to suggest something a bit off the wall here - the infamous smoking laptop contains details of Iran's old weapons program, the one the NIE said had been shut down in 2003. It's been doctored by those who "donated" it to US intelligence to make it appear more contemporary and relevant. The pre-2003 program never got further than the beginnings of on-paper studies (for instance, the re-entry vehicle wouldn't actually work), which is why the IAEA have found no use of nuclear material which could be associated with these allegations. The Iranians, knowing all this, are now willing to play hardball because they know there are no new damaging revelations going to come out of investigations of the laptop data, even by accident - and so the hardliners have decided to be hardliners and cock a snook at the US. It's a theory that seems to fit the data and squares the circle between US and Iranian allegation and denial cycles.

If so, then at this point the hardliners in both camps need to climb down out of their trees. As Andy Grotto writes:

I can’t imagine Iran ever coming fully clean—or adopting the kinds of transparency measures needed to verify the peaceful nature of its program, such as the IAEA Additional Protocol—unless it is given a face-saving way out of this mess. Such a pathway cannot emerge until the United States gets serious about meaningful multilateral diplomacy with Iran that includes credible incentives to accompany the sanctions.

I'd only add that both camps need a face-saving way out of the corners they've painted themselves into - US hawks are just as unlikely to ever come clean about the ways they've spun the anti-Iran narrative or back off their insistence that Iran's program isn't now peaceful without one. That's probably going to take someone high up with the courage to change the game.

Next IAEA Report On Iran Due

By Cernig

According to IAEA officials, the next report on Iran is due out this weekend, either tomorrow or Monday. It's expected to say, yet again, that Iran has been cagy but co-operating and that the IAEA still haven't found a smoking gun or even a waterpistol.

So it must be time for those who would prefer the words "Iran" and "nuclear threat" to be conjoined in the public's mind to set out a new range of accusations. That way, they can point at the IAEA's report and say "but it doesn't answer these questions!"

Oh look, whaddaya know.

The MeK says Iran has a secret nuke plant in Tehran's suburbs. This, presumably, is different from all the other Iranian secret nuke plants the MeK have "revealed" since 2003 and passed to the U.S. - thence to the IAEA - but which turned out to be entirely non-existant when investigated.

And the Bush administration is pushing the laptop the MeK was given by some guy again.

Strange Bedfellows

By Cernig

They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, but the pairing of the American right and an odious terror outfit who did Saddam's bully work and have killed US citizens must be the very strangest.

Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and Murdoch's Jersusalem Post today both report that the political wing of the neocon's favorite terrorist group, the Islamo-Marxist and messianic Mujahedin-e Khalq, is saying that Iran has restarted it's secret nuclear weapons program.

"We announce vehemently that the clerical regime is currently continuing its drive to obtain nuclear weapons," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, a spokesman for the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI.

..."The clerical regime leaks false information and intelligence to Western intelligence services, through double agents," he said.

...It was not possible to independently verify the NCRI claims, which Mohaddessin said came from sources within Iran, including some among staff at covert nuclear plants.

Four years ago, the group disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites that helped uncover nearly two decades of covert Iranian atomic activity. But much of the information it has presented since then to back up claims that Iran has a secret weapons program has not been publicly verified.

That's an understatement and a half. Not a single one out of over a score of the MeK's lurid claims has proven true since it got it's original one right - and the MeK actually only confirmed what other sources had already said even then.

Yet every time this group, which believes it's charismatic leader is the actual 12th Imam, makes a statement, the American Right falls over itself to believe them. The contrast with their distrust of Iran's president because he's a religious fanatic who believes the 12th imam will come eventually is instructive.

Recently, the Right's hypocritical sycophancy for a bunch of terrorists has included swooning over a petition that keeps getting smaller every time it's reported, getting outraged over pictures of Iranian rights abuses that turned out not to be what was claimed and happily taking this same bunch of liars' word for it when the US military use them to conduct deniable "enhanced interrogations" of detainees in Iraq.

Indeed, the US military, on administration instructions, has cossetted and pampered the MeK - giving them salubrious living accomodation in a protected camp in Iraq and resisting Iraqi attempts to put the whole odious bunch in court for their crimes against the Iraqi people. The message from the Bush White House is clearly read by its cheerleader pundits and by Murdoch's WSJ:

The claim, to be made public today by the National Council for Resistance in Iran, joins a broad pushback by conservative hawks who say the U.S. analysis has wrongly given the impression that Iran's nuclear-fuel program doesn't present an urgent threat."

The War on Terror be damned, these are our terrorists doing our work for us.

Today, when told that the MeK is "not the most reliable of sources" (still a massive understatement), Jules Crittenden speaks for the Right when he posts that:

Well, it’s not like the United States intelligence community is the most reliable of sources, either.

So what Jules is saying, and getting wide agreement on, is that he'd rather believe some nutcase-terrorist, neocon-sponsored, regime-change outfit who constantly shill for a U.S. war on Iran so they can take over Chalibi-style than he would the CIA.

The AIAE has said it will investigate the MeK's latest set of allegations, just as it has every other set. No-one should be holding their breath that this time the MeK are right, though.

Israel Briefed On NIE Before Congress

By Cernig

Laura Rozen at War and Piece notes that, according to Haaretz, "During their visit to Washington last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were briefed on the report." However, when top State negotiator Under Secretary Burns met with his opposite numbers from Europe, Russia and China to press for more sanctions on Iran, "Mr. Burns could not divulge the intelligence findings at that meeting on Friday because Congress had not been briefed."

I bet Britain and the rest are sooo pleased, even if so far the Europeans are outwardly continuing to back Bush.

Laura also notes the glaring conclusion - Israel got a briefing before Congress did.

Not that it made a difference - the Israelis immediately announced their own dark suspicions that Iran had "probably" restarted it's nuclear program - helpfully kicking the ball down the road for US neocons.

Russia's Putin, in a meeting with Iran's nuclear negotiator, has vocally backed the IAEA who themselves say that the NIE is consistent with the U.N. atomic watchdog agency's own findings and "should help to defuse the current crisis."

"Although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran," International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.

It's just possible that Israel and those neocons "in the know" are quietly kicking themselves today. Kevin Drum cites Laura again on why their was a sudden turnaround on releasing the NIE's key findings, something which the White House had originally said wouldn't happen:

The NIE released today had been held up for more than a year. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats this summer, the CIA's top intel analyst indicated to Mother Jones during a break that the delay was due in part to new intelligence that the United States had obtained. The source of that intelligence has not been revealed, but comments by national security advisor Stephen Hadley today suggested the United States had received new information a few months ago and that a conclusion on the NIE's findings was reached only last Tuesday.

Remember the Iranian general, Ali Rez Asgari, who defected/was kidnapped back in March to much glee from the wingnuts about how he could blow the whistle on Iran's nuclear weapons plans? Maybe he did - just not in the way they expected. In turn, as Kevin puts it, "the intelligence community was directly responding to the fact that Bush and Cheney were continuing to make hawkish statements even when they knew the evidence didn't back it up."

Update There are others thinking about that Iranian general, it seems.

The U-turn by US spy agencies over Iran, the biggest since the Iraq debacle five years ago, is the result of "physical" intelligence, likely to be a defector, according to various diplomatic and security sources in Washington today.

One of the main figures in the frame is General Ali-Reza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister and Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander.

Asgari apparently disappeared in Turkey over the last 12 months, having either defected or been kidnapped, and may be in US hands.

I well recall how many of the neocons were crowing that Asgari would blow the lid off the lies over Iran's nukes.

But all accounts said that Israel was sharing the intel from Asgari, having been part of his kidnap or defection - so if the Israelis are stonewalling the NIE today having been briefed on it last week, then they already know they are warmongering on the feeblest of pretexts.

Yet More Syria Nonsense

By Cernig

Yet more crapola from the London Times' Uzi Mahnaimi about the Israli attack on a big box in the Syrian desert back in September. It wasn't a reactor after all, he says, it was a bomb factory:

ISRAEL’S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.

Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University was one of the founders of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, the source of the Jewish state’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.

“I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely, a factory for assembling the bomb,” he said. “I think the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] transferred to Syria weapons-grade plutonium in raw form, that is nuggets of easily transported metal in protective cans. I think the shaping and casting of the plutonium was supposed to be in Syria.”

Blowing up such a facility would scatter uniquely identifiable radioactive debris into the atmosphere, something Mahnaimi's expert concedes - yet at the time US officials confirmed that no such debris had been detected.

And what happened to Mahnaimi's last story about the Big Box? The one where he said Israeli commandos had even been inside and seized materials. Surely that would make the current story irrelevant. Could it be that Mahnaimi is just a serial liar?

Dave Schuler writes:

The facts as we know them (and as ably summarized at GlobalSecurity) are that on September 6, 2007 Israeli warplanes attacked a site in Syria and that some time subsequent to that the Syrians completely levelled the site. That’s about it. Everything else we’ve heard are statements about the facts.

We need more facts. Short of that it’s just keeping the ball in the air. To what purpose?

Well, Dave, no rightwing pundit or politician ever lost money or votes from hyping fear of war with the neighbours. And I continue to believe there's a very useful element of "look, over there!" involved for Irsael, which is the subject of a push by Egypt and Syrian at the IAEA to allow inspections of its own nuclear facilities by the nuke watchdogs.

IAEA board to debate Iran report

By Cernig

While American readers are eating Thanksgiving turkey, the board of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency will be debating Iran in the light of the most recent report which said Iran could do more to allay fears but that there was no evidence for a nuclear weapons program and that the current centrifuge cascades couldn't be used for making weapon material without the IAEA knowing.

IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei is expected to defend the Agency's work plan in the face of increased pressure by the Bush administration to get its allies to back more and harsher sanctions. It was OK, it seems, to ask for more time for The Surge to work but not for something that could prevent war by removing underlying fears.

Meanwhile, some of the same people who have always described Ahmadinejad of Iran as a dictator, likened him to Hitler and said he is a monolithic threat to the World are agog today that an Iranian hardline newspaper with close ties to the Grand Ayatollah has rebuked Iran's president for calling opponents of the nuclear program "traitors". If they had bothered to pay attention, they would have found us lefties saying that Ahmin-nutjob had problems for quite some time now. We've been quite looking forward to his political demise, more even than we've been looking forward to Bush's.

But they can't have it both ways - either he's a dictator to be feared or a sorry-ass s.o.b. who may be about to get canned by the real boss of Iran to the applause of everyone else on the planet. Can they at least admit that the dictator talk was simple hyperbolic fearmongering now?

Mostly Harmless

By Cernig

The IAEA says that director el-Baradei's latest report on Iran safeguards is "restricted and unless the IAEA Board decides otherwise it cannot be released to the public." But someone has already leaked it to the New York Times. Read the report before you read the versions in the press which often rely on anonymous diplomats attending the IAEA - who are not part of the Agency's technical operations and may well be from Israel, the U.S., Iran, Syria or some other nation with an agenda to spin.

The leaked news is cautiously encouraging. Questions regarding Iran's declared past P-1 and P-2 centrifuge programs have been answered and are consistent with IAEA findings. Iran does indeed have 3,000 centrifuges but they're still working at very low efficiency (Dr. Jeffrey Lewis and others have said 20% efficiency - so multiply all timelines to a weapon by five). However the Iranians are still being cagey. The IAEA still cannot say for certain that Iran has no weapons program (recall, from the Iraq WMD farago, the difficulty of proving a negative) but it still has found nothing that would constitute any kind of even mildly hazy gun, let alone a smoking one.

Which means the debate will go on, for now - with each side of the debate tending to see its own evidence and arguments most clearly - and the U.S. and its closest allies will continue to press for further sanctions.

But Iran isn't the only one being cagey - the Bush administration has said that it will not release even the executive summary of the latest NIE on Iran. Which means we will have two sides of the story and no real way to conclusively prove either. That isn't a healthy climate for informed and democratic debate when the same Bush administration is putting in place even the smaller details required for a war with Iran.

More and more, though, as I read through reams of Iranian nuclear speculation, it seems to me that the most likely explanation is that Iran originally thought about having a weapons program so did some basic experimenting and procurement but nothing much or very seriously. However, once the nuclear program as a whole was exposed, even these tentative minor efforts were quietly dropped. It fits the known facts to date, rather than the wild and disproven (by IAEA inspections) talk that comes from the MeK's political wing and its neocon helpers.

Reading Comprehension

By Cernig

How is it possible to read this?

Khalilzad repeated the formulation about Iran that has been expressed many times by many Bush administration voices. "Given the record of this regime, the rhetoric of this regime, the policies of this regime, the connections of this regime, it cannot be acceptable for it to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons." It was a wearyingly familiar argument. Our assessment of the character of the Iranian regime determines whether we will permit it to pursue a nuclear "capability."

But on the same day that Khalilzad spoke, America's good friend Egypt announced that it intended to build several nuclear power plants over the next several decades. Washington was quick to indicate that it did not disapprove. "Any country that fulfills its obligations under the NPT and follows proper IAEA safeguards will have a program that is perfectly acceptable to us," said Casey (emphasis added). "They're fully within their rights to go that way."

The two remarks are well worth parsing. It is true that Iran, illegally, kept many nuclear activities secret from the International Atomic Energy Agency for many years. It is a matter of some debate whether Tehran is fully cooperating with the IAEA now.

But the Bush administration's standard for Iran has never been simply that it must fully cooperate with the IAEA. It demands, instead, that Tehran cease all uranium enrichment - the crucial element for the development of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Had Khalilzad said "develop nuclear weapons" instead of "develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons," he would perhaps not have found himself on such thin ice. But the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids its non-nuclear signatories from acquiring nuclear weapons, not from acquiring the enrichment capabilities that can be used for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. On the contrary, Article IV explicitly acknowledges that all parties possess an "inalienable right" to pursue nuclear energy, "without discrimination." It is becoming increasingly apparent that Article IV was a flaw in the NPT itself, a flaw that many hope will someday be corrected in a nuclear weapons convention requiring universal abolition. But that flaw is hardly Iran's fault.

It may well be that Tehran does ultimately aspire to produce not just nuclear electricity, but also a few nuclear weapons to deter the aggression that others keep threatening to launch. But no one claims that it is doing so now. Indeed, the day before Khalilzad and Casey spoke, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei told CNN: "Have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No."

So, contrary to Casey's declaration, the U.S. government is hardly conceding that "any country" meeting his stated criteria is acting in a manner "perfectly acceptable to us." The Bush administration, instead, subjectively and unilaterally, is assessing the "record, rhetoric, policies and connections" of both Egypt and Iran, and pronouncing, in our wisdom, that the one may proceed down the nuclear road while the other may not.

No other possible conclusion can be drawn, since Iran, in pursuing, so far at least, merely a nuclear "capability," is in fact in accord with its obligations under the NPT.

They're fully within their rights to go that way.

And come away with this?

Nobel Peace laureate Tad Daley, a writing fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, has a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer arguing that Iran has a right to seek nuclear weapons.

It’s a glimpse into the bizarre mental contortions necessary for a “peace activist” to openly support a radical Islamic state’s “right” to the ultimate weapon. He even seems to realize that Iran is lying about their “peaceful intentions”—but his hatred and distrust of the West, and especially President Bush, trumps everything else. Daley is a nuclear freeze advocate who’s in favor of Iran having nuclear bombs; a non-proliferation activist who sees nothing wrong with this kind of proliferation.

I suspect it takes a great deal of deliberate effort. Or bizarre mental contortions.

Israel Wants El-Baradei Out At Nuke Watchdog

By Cernig

Via the BBC:

A senior Israeli minister has called for the sacking of Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog. Deputy PM Shaul Mofaz said the Egyptian head of the International Atomic Energy Agency had endangered world peace by neglecting Iran's nuclear programme.

His comments come days before the IAEA is to publish its latest Iran report.

Mr ElBaradei has said Iran's nuclear programme is not an immediate threat and if it wanted to build a nuclear bomb it would need years to do so.

The IAEA report will help determine whether the United Nations imposes a third set of sanctions on Tehran.

"The policies followed by ElBaradei endanger world peace. His irresponsible attitude of sticking his head in the sand over Iran's nuclear programme should lead to his impeachment," Mr Mofaz said during a visit to Washington.

Imagine, a minister from a nation which developed nukes in secret, is still not a signatory of the NPT and is under pressure at the IAEA to open up its nuclear programs to inspection wants El Baradei gone. Who'd a thunk it?

Iran And The Cartel

By Cernig

Last night Clinton was assailed by fellow Dems for enabling war with Iran and yesterday a poll revealed that a bare majority of Americans would be OK with that war. Yet despite claims made by the Bush administration and their foreign allies in demonizing Iran, there is no actual evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program (while Pakistan, the world's biggest proliferator and terrorist enabler, gets a free pass).

So why the drumbeat for war, which has gained such massive traction simply by repetition? Well, there's a complex of reasons, primarily neoconservative fuelling of a sense of American honor and power besmirched by this upstart nation back in '79. Competition for control of the region's oil and gas resources certainly plays a part. Some people even, no doubt, honestly believe that attacking Iran is part and parcel of the War On what has turned out to be some Terror (just ask the MeK or PKK).

But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino let the cat out of the bag on one little talked about factor behind the drumbeat the other day.

"This is a country that is enriching and reprocessing uranium and the reason that one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon,"

She said in attempting a rebuttal of IAEA head el-Baradei's assertion that the nuke watchdog had no evidence of Iranian wrongdoing despite countless leads provided by the U.S. which have turned out to be false ones.

"The reason that one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon." Oh really? Could Dana maybe explain that to the conservative Howard government in Australia, who are actively considering a massive multi-billion investment in enriching and reprocessing facilities? Could she explain that to Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands - all of whom have enrichment facilities but no nukes (and to non-weapon nations Belgium, Italy and Spain who hold an investment interest in the French Eurodif enrichment plant)? Could she explain it to the good people of America while she's at it? After all, her own administration are aggressively pushing new enrichment and reprocessing ventures too, even though the U.S. uses plutonium rather than uranium in its weapons. Ditto with France, the UK, Russia and China.

And that's where the cat leaps out of the bag. You see, Iran's closing of the nuclear fuel cycle is a direct threat to the Bush administration's plan for a very lucrative nuclear fuel cartel - primarily selling enriched uranium to nations like Egypt who have just announced plans for several nuclear power plants. Uranium is at its highest price ever and is expected to keep rising for the next two decades at least. Reprocessing and storage deals are worth billions to nations like Russia should they be willing to take the world's waste. That willingness to take nuke waste is essential to the Bush administration's own plans for an expansion of nuclear power in the U.S.

And here in the States, the primary beneficiaries of all of these plans - from new power plants to the uranium cartel known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP - are the selfsame energy corporations that have made out like bandits from the escalating price of oil and preferential deals since Bush started meddling in aggressive foreign policy.

Like the man said - always follow the money.

Nuke Watchdog Head Slams Anti-Iran Rhetoric

By Cernig

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has again slammed anti-Iran rhetoric from the Bush administration and repeated that the Agency has no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday he had no evidence Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster.

"We have information that there has been maybe some studies about possible weaponization," said Mohamed ElBaradei, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency. "That's why we have said that we cannot give Iran a pass right now, because there is still a lot of question marks."

"But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran this month of "lying" about the aim of its nuclear program. She said there is no doubt Tehran wants the capability to produce nuclear weapons and has deceived the IAEA about its intentions.

Vice President Dick Cheney has raised the prospect of "serious consequences" if Iran were found to be working toward developing a nuclear weapon. Last week, the Bush administration announced harsh penalties against the Iranian military and state-owned banking systems in hopes of raising pressure on the world financial system to cut ties with Tehran.

ElBaradei said he was worried about the growing rhetoric from the U.S., which he noted focused on Iran's alleged intentions to build a nuclear weapon rather than evidence the country was actively doing so. If there is actual evidence, ElBaradei said he would welcome seeing it.

"I'm very much concerned about confrontation, building confrontation, because that would lead absolutely to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiation and inspection," he said.

I fully expect the extreme right to attack el-Baradei again for what they will call "meddling" in diplomacy instead of just quietly doing inspections. But surely, if his Agency's inspections and his experts are saying something at such variance with the bush administration line, he has a duty to speak up. Especially when, as never gets reported in the US media, the US has passed the IAEA dozens of leads about the alleged iranian nuclear weapons program and on every single occasion US intelligence assessments and suspicions have proven to be based on false claims by regime-change outfits like the MeK and Ken Timmerman's group.

Of course, backing both the US and Iran into belligerent corners is seen by the Fourth Branch and it's wormtongues as a feature, not a bug.

The same is true of the evolving story of EFP penetrators, supposedly supplied by Iran to Shiite militias in Iraq. This narrative has been aggressively pushed despite many gaping holes in the official line. Veteran journalist Gareth Porter has done an excellent job of following the evolving hype and his latest article sets out the contrary evidence neatly. Iraqi machine shops have been producing their own EFPs for years and the Iraqis almost certainly managed to get the know-how from Hezboullah - the world experts on EFP's - without any involvement from Iran being needed.

El Baradei is the man appointed by the international community to head up the agency responsible for inspections and investigations of alleged illegal nuclear programs. He has done an excellent job - and was correct about Iraq's suppoed program the last time the Bush administration's warmongers tried to pressure him out of his job for speaking up about their fixing the facts around the policy. When he is criticized now, the world should understand that attacks on him and his agency are aimed at silencing a contrary voice against the narrative and do not stem from real concerns about his interfering with the diplomatic process.

US And Israel Are Uniting The Middle East

By Cernig

Between America's and Israel's leaders, they might just manage the impossible - uniting all the regions Muslim neighbours by giving them common cause to take remedial steps in preventing an explosion of unrest in the region. The problem is, much of the blame for such unrest will be laid at the doors of the U.S. and Israel.

New Zaman reports that Syrian President Assad is about to visit Turkey at their express invite, to discuss events fuelled by the U.S. and Israel.

Assad's visit comes at a time when Ankara has been dealing with a looming crisis with its NATO ally, the United States, due to Turkey's intention to launch a military incursion into northern Iraq to tackle the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based there, as well as Turkey's anger over a resolution approved by a US congressional committee branding the 1915 killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.

...Last week, [Turkish Foreign Minister] Babacan paid an official visit to Damascus as part of a regional tour of Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel, and voiced Ankara's desire to see its neighbor Syria in the coming period as part of regional resolutions, not as part of regional problems. Ahead of his visit to Damascus he had visited Israel, where he raised eyebrows when he said he wanted details of an Israeli air raid last month on a Syrian target near the border with Turkey.

Also last week, Assad was quoted in a Tunisian daily as saying that Turkey is mediating between Damascus and Jerusalem in preparation for negotiations. During the past six months, Turkey had renewed its mediation efforts through frequent visits by officials from Ankara to Damascus, he said, noting that Turkish officials are playing a role in preparing the groundwork for negotiations with Syria.

A decade ago, Syria and Turkey were almost at war - now the Turks are acting as Syria's intermediaries. Well done, Israel and the U.S.

America's invasion of Iraq and subsequent hypocrisy over fighting Kurdish seperatist terrorists who mount attacks in both Turkey and Iran may yet manage to usher in an unprecedented co-operation between Teheran and Ankara too, while Israel's loose-cannon actions will cause other Arab states to unite to defend their plans for nuclear power. After all, if Israel will bomb a Syrian building and blame it on a mythical nuclear fingerprint while the U.S. insists it will keep its options open about an Iranian nuclear weapon program for which evidence of any such program is likewise bereft, then nations like Egypt, the UAE and Jordan who have announced they will pursue nuclear power programs must be more than just a little nervous about protecting such multi-billion dollar investments.

And by the way, the Turks aren't the only ones that want answers about Israel's recent bombing run. The IAEA is definitely peeved that no-one in Israel or America thought to make use of the international nuke watchdog - another manifestation of their contempt for international consensus and the rule of law.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has no information about any undeclared nuclear facility in Syria and no information about recent reports," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement issued from the IAEA's Vienna headquarters.

"The IAEA is in contact with the Syrian authorities to verify the authenticity of these reports," she said.

"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."

A Vienna diplomat close to the IAEA said it had initiated contacts with Damascus shortly after the air raid but the Syrians had provided no clarification yet.

U.S. officials have linked the raid to apparent Israeli suspicions of covert nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria. They said the site in question was identified earlier this year in satellite photographs.

Syria has denied hiding any nuclear activity from the IAEA or having anything other than energy goals with nuclear work.

The Vienna diplomat said that if Syria was indeed building a new reactor, it would have been required to inform the agency, and provide design data, as soon as it decided to construct one.

No country had provided satellite or other intelligence about the alleged plant to the IAEA although such help would be crucial to detecting such a site, added the diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the topic's political sensitivity.

"With the (low) level of IAEA funding, inspectors can't go around a country checking every building. The IAEA is not a go-it-alone investigative agency," said the diplomat.

Kudos go to Reuters for bothering to talk to the man at the top of any list of interviewees for a report on nuclear matters - someone Sanger and Mazzetti at the NYT obviously overlooked in their rush to get David Addington's copy to print:

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 flattened in 1981.

"A very real question is whether Syria is technically and financially able to build such a reactor. It would be hard to justify an air strike on a facility so early on in construction and, if supplied by North Korea, unlikely ever to be finished," U.S. analyst David Albright, alluding to North Korea's nuclear disarmament agreement earlier this year, told Reuters.

"Israel may have wanted to send a signal to Iran. The U.S. wants to scare Iran (off nuclear work) and this air strike might have been a way to do it, and explain some of Israel's secrecy."

Albright's point is a valid one - and Israel's other neighbours will be reaching the conclusion that if Israel, with US hawk complicity, can decide on such an outrageous act of unwarranted aggression against Syria then they could just as easily decide to do it again with Jordan or Egypt or any other neighbour.

Update One of our regular commenters, Charles, has a post of his own which compellingly argues the "Syrian nukes" story is prime BS.

He also points to a Juan Cole interview with Retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs Ray Close:

"Personally, I believe that the most persuasive reason for studied silence on this subject, on the part of both Republicans and Democrats, is the reluctance (call it fear) of individual politicians that they might be put in a position of appearing to criticize Israel for poor judgment (or even deliberate deception), and thereby appearing to oppose intimate collaboration with Israel (yes, even in acts of illegitimate preemptive military action) against "supporters of terrorism."

And to an interview with Philip Giraldi, former DIA and CIA officer, partner at Cannistraro Associates, Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance and Antiwar.com columnist, who says both DIA and CIA have discounted the nuke story and that his information that the target was an air defense system.

Deja Vu, Clinton Style

By Cernig

Via Ezra, I see that Hilary Clinton has made her late entry into the Foreign Affairs magazine series which has given each prospective presidential nominee a chance to set out their foreign policy agenda.

Most of it is copperplate Democratic thinking on foreign policy - so much so that in many cases other candidate's essays did a better job of expounding it and Clinton almost seems to be offhandedly referring to those essays - as if she expects Richardson and Obama, at least, to be in her cabinet.

Ezra flags up the major hawkish point, though:

Iran must conform to its nonproliferation obligations and must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table.

On the other hand, if Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons program, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilizing Iraq, the United States should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives. This will let the Iranian people know that our quarrel is not with them but with their government and show the world that the United States is prepared to pursue every diplomatic option.

Ezra's correct - this can't be understood any other way than as a clear statement that Clinton will go to war with Iran if it doesn't buckle under to U.S. demands.

But there's a wee problem with this. Earlier in her essay, Clinton writes:

After 9/11, the world rallied behind the United States as never before, supporting our efforts to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and go after the al Qaeda leadership. We had a historic opportunity to build a broad global coalition to combat terror, increase the impact of our diplomacy, and create a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.

But we lost that opportunity by refusing to let the UN inspectors finish their work in Iraq and rushing to war instead (Emphasis Mine - C)

As we've mentioned a time or two on this blog, but folks like Clinton ignore every time, there's still a rather large question mark over the assertion that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program at all. The experts at the IAEA have consistently said that they've found no evidence of such a program, that every time the U.S. provides them intelligence about some aspect of an alleged program they investigate and find the U.S. claims to be untrue, and that Iran is now steadily closing the knowledge gaps - again, with no sign of a weapons program in sight.

Apparently, Clinton doesn't learn from past experiences. What happens if Iran can't close its nuclear weapons program because it doesn't have one, if America doesn't believe either Iran or the IAEA just as it didn't believe Iraq and the IAEA's inspectors? Clinton will do as she did before and vote for aggressive and unwarranted warfare. Only this time, she'll be Commander In Chief, not just a Senator. And later, we'll be treated to exactly the same crap about "no-one believed Iraqn didn't have WMD" as we were last time.

But at least she managed to write a whole FP essay, mentioning a need to strengthen the NPT regime several times, without once mentioning the nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan or Israel - all developed in secret and outwith the NPT entirely.

Sheesh.

Whatever Happened To "Trust But Verify"?

By Cernig

It was Reagan's best line - "trust but verify" - delivered in the dark days of the Cold War about a massively-armed totalitarian state which the Wst had been confronting across minefields and razor wire for decades.

But the current US administration refuses to offer even the smallest smidgeon of trust to Iran, even when the verifiers - the experts at the international nuke watchdog - are verifying like mad.

Today, the AP reports that Iran is still keeping up its new-found spirit of co-operation with the IAEA:

Iran said it answered questions on its centrifuge technology during three days of talks that ended Thursday with a delegation from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

The discussions were the latest attempt by the International Atomic Energy Agency to address outstanding questions on a program that many Western countries believe is cover for weapons development, but Iran insists is focused on power generation.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Iran answered all IAEA questions over its P-1 and P-2 centrifuges during the talks, headed by IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen and Iran's deputy nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeedi.

Centrifuges are used in enriching uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a warhead. P-2 centrifuges are more sophisticated, consuming less electricity and producing more enriched uranium.

"Tehran expects the IAEA does not bow to the pressures by some countries," and to work in a technical and legal framework, the report said, referring to calls by the U.S. and its allies for new sanctions against Iran.

The U.N. has demanded Iran suspend enrichment and has twice imposed limited sanctions for Tehran's refusal to do so.

The talks in Tehran were a continuation of the four previous rounds of talks between Iran and the IAEA, three of which were held in Tehran and one in Vienna where the IAEA is based.

Iran is now saying that it intends to continue this openness, but refuses to suspend its enrichment program, which it correctly states it has every right to pursue under the NPT.

Yet the Bush administration continue to attempt to force Iran into a violent showdown, demanding that the end result of face-to-face negotiations - ending enrichment - be a prerequisite for starting those negotiations, and indulging in mistrust not just of Iran but of the UN's own experts.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of "lying" about the aim of its nuclear program, saying there's no doubt Tehran wants the capability to produce nuclear weapons and has deceived the U.N.'s atomic watchdog about its intentions.

"There is an Iranian history of obfuscation and, indeed, lying to the IAEA," she said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "There is a history of Iran not answering important questions about what is going on ...," Rice said aboard her plane as she headed to Mos-cow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. officials have long accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of a civil atomic energy program, charges that Tehran denies. But Rice's strong words, including the blunt reference to Iranian "lying," come at a critical time in dealing with the matter.

The United States is trying to win Russian support for new U.N. sanctions against Iran but has faced sharp resistance from Moscow, which has nuclear cooperation agreements with Tehran and argues the country should be given more time to come clean on its programs.

Putin said this week there is no proof Tehran is trying to build the bomb.

And Putin is right - there isn't. Not a single shred of proof. Repeatedly over the past few years, US provided allegations of secret facilities and secret programs, usually provided by the MeK terror group as a gambit in its push to get the US to attack Iran for the MeK's benefit, have been investigated and proven false.

In other words, there isn't any proof at all that the IAEA's verifiers aren't doing their job.

If we want to talk histories, Condi, then there's a history of the Bush administration sexing up intelligence to fix it around a policy of armed, premeditated belligerence. Putin, in this case at least, is correct to say that the UNSC and the majority of the six primary negotiating nations (China, Russia, the Uk and Germany but not the US and France) feel that new sanctions calls should be put on hold to give the IAEA enough time to do its job properly. The Bushies demanded that time for Petraeus, so why not for el-Baradei? Put trust in the verifiers.

Give The Experts A Chance

By Cernig

When the Bush administration were exorting everyone to listen to the experts on the ground and give them just another Friedman Unit of time in Iraq as part of their "surge for the surge", I wonder if it occured to them what the most obvious blowback would be?

The U.N. Security Council probably will delay a move to impose new sanctions against Iran until December, when U.N. weapons inspectors conclude a review of Iran's past nuclear activities, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Thursday.

Kouchner, speaking at a breakfast with reporters, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear in talks last week in Moscow that he would not consider Security Council sanctions over the next three months.

Kouchner's remarks came a day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to discuss a diplomatic reaction to Iran's nuclear activity with the council's four other permanent members -- Britain, China, France and Russia -- plus Germany. The United States hopes to use the meeting to build support for tougher action against Iran, which has repeatedly ignored demands from the council to halt its enrichment of uranium.

The administration and the Senate seem willing to ignore their own logic. It's a hell of a thing when Russia, of all nations, must remind America that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Update The Bush administration and its allies have agreed to delay their push for further sanctions against Iran.

Six key nations agreed Friday to delay until November a new U.N. resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran answers questions about its disputed nuclear program.

A joint statement from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief U.N. nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief ``show a positive outcome of their efforts.''

The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Tehran more time to comply with U.N. inspectors.

Asked whether the agreement was tantamount to a cave-in by the United States, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's No. 3 diplomat, said ``the alchemy of this group is such that anything is going to be a compromise.''

He said the statement sent ``a very tough and strict message to Iran.''

....nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian officials agreed in July that Tehran would answer questions from agency experts by December on more than two decades of nuclear activity - most of it secret until revealed more than four years ago. Technical officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Tehran this week to start probing outstanding questions, some with possible weapons applications.

In the statement, the six countries welcomed the IAEA agreement with Iran.

``We call upon Iran, however, to produce tangible results rapidly and effectively by clarifying all outstanding issues and concerns on Iran's nuclear program including topics which could have the military nuclear dimension,'' the statement said.

``Full transparency and cooperation by Iran with the IAEA is essential in order to address outstanding concerns,'' it said.

I say let the experts do their jobs. If the full measure of time was good enough for Petreaus then it is good enough for the IAEA. If Iran doesn't co-operate fully, then the IAEA will say so.

And if the Agency comes back and says Iran answered all its questions in a satisfactory manner, then the U.S. should drop its demand that Iran stop uranium enrichment before face-to-face negotiations can take place. Enrichment when it is not aimed at weapons production is allowable under the NPT and demanding that Iran give up that right as a starting point on negotiations on whether it should permanently halt such enrichment is simply a deliberate attempt to back it into a diplomatic corner in pursuit of a pretext for war.

Israeli Document Inadvertently Admits Nukes

By Cernig

Everybody knows Israel has nuclear weapons. But because it has never officially either confirmed or denied having them, supporting nations allow themselves the convenient fiction of not officially knowing that Israel developed those weapons and continues to hold them outwith the NPT under conditions of secrecy far worse than those levelled at Iran.

However, in their zeal to pursue a deal with the U.S. akin to the one Bush and Congress handed that other NPT non-complier, India, the Israelis have shot themselves in the foot somewhat.

VIENNA, Austria - Israel is looking to a U.S.-India nuclear deal to expand its own ties to suppliers, quietly lobbying for an exemption to non-proliferation rules so it can legally import atomic material, according to documents made available Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The new push is reflected in papers Israel presented earlier this year to the "Nuclear Suppliers' Group" — 45 nations that export nuclear fuel and technology under strict rules meant to lessen the dangers of proliferation and trafficking in materials that could be used for a weapons program.

The initiative appeared to be linked to a U.S.-India agreement that would effectively waive the group's rules by allowing the United States to supply India with nuclear fuel despite its refusal both to sign the nonproliferation treaty and allowing the IAEA to inspect all of its nuclear facilities.

...Under a cover letter labeled "confidential," the two papers were circulated among the group March 19 by Japan, whose mission to Vienna's International Atomic Energy Agency serves as the liaison office for the group.

...In the paper proposing a list of criteria to be used by NSG countries for "Nuclear Collaboration with non-NPT States," Israel inadvertently appeared to touch on the debate over its own status, saying one condition should be application of "stringent physical protection, control, and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons ... in its territory."

The other document urges "the international community at large and NSG Member States in particular" to cooperate "with non-NPT states with strong non-proliferation credentials" in the "supply of (nuclear) know-how and equipment."

Despite close U.S.-Israeli ties, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns appeared to rule out special treatment for the Jewish state, telling reporters earlier this year that NSG countries needed to know the deal with India "won't be a precedent to bring other countries in under the same basis."

But Daryl Kimball, an analyst and executive director of the Arms Control Association, said that — even if unsuccessful — any attempt by Israel to move closer to nations exporting sensitive nuclear technology and material that could potentially be turned into fissile material for warheads would alarm many in the Middle East.

"There is a great deal of tensions between non-nuclear (Arab) weapons states and Israel, and the mere existence of this proposal would exacerbate ... the Middle East situation," he said from Washington.

And despite U.S. assurances, "Israel's proposal illustrates the danger of making exemptions for individual countries from nonproliferation rules and standards," he said.

The most recent tensions over Israel's nuclear capabilities surfaced at the IAEA's 148-nation general conference. On Thursday, the Vienna meeting's penultimate day, only the U.S. and Israel voted against a critical resolution implicitly aimed at the Jewish State for refusing to put its nuclear program under international purview.

How could Israel promise to apply "stringent physical protection, control, and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons ... in its territory" in pursuit of such a deal if it didn't have any such weapons? Either you will believe that Israel is only saying this to help its pals in Pakistan and India (the other two non-NPT nuclear states) out of the goodness of its own heart...OK, done laughing?...or you will see this as an admission of possession.

Israel should submit to inspections by the IAEA, and the US should stop covering for an illegal nuclear state.