Aletho News

The Two Weak Pillars Of The IAEA’s Case Against Iran

Moon of Alabama | November 12, 2011

The annex of the recent IAEA report on Iran claims that Iran, up to 2003, had an active nuclear weapon program and, based on a few hints also claims that such a program “MAY” have continued after 2003. (Only 4 out of 65 paragraphs in the annex point to some post-2003 work).

The IAEA accusations about the alleged pre-2003 work relies on two major pillars of “evidence” plus some “corroborating” information from open and dubious secret sources. The report is based on “1,000 pages of research” claims the IAEA, pretending that volume can make up for quality.

The first pillar of evidence are issues related to the work of the Ukrainian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko in Iran. The second pillar is a set of papers in electronic form known as the “alleged studies” which were collected on the “Laptop of Death” and which some secret “western” agency years ago pushed onto the IAEA. It is from a combination of selected parts of those two sets of alleged “evidence” and some additional hearsay, anecdotes and innuendo that the IAEA report draws its conclusions.

My analysis of the work of Ukrainian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko showed that his known expertise is the production of nanodiamonds through detonations and not nuclear weapons production. Danilenko’s work is about precise explosions that push a concentrated detonation wave onto carbon atoms which then, under maximum pressure, form into small diamond crystals. These are useful in many industrial fields for example for high quality polishing of optics and computer hard disk surfaces.

I also demonstrated that Iran has a very active nanotechnology program and that its scientists have published various papers about their progress in this field. Danilenko himself categorically denies having worked on anything other than civil applications of his knowledge with Iran. While some of the technologies used in creating nanodiamonds can also be applied towards nuclear weapons, the IAEA report shows no proof that Iran has done this. That someone uses a screwdriver to fix a car does not provide that s/he plans to stab the neighbor.

This now has some officials in a twist and they are racing to reclaim the lost credibility of the IAEA allegations by throwing more chaff around:

[D]iplomats — who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged — said Danilenko’s son-in-law has further implicated the scientist, telling the agency the expert also helped Iran build a related project, a large steel chamber to contain the force of the blast set off by such explosives testing.Diplomats first told the AP last week that the IAEA had evidence of such a chamber, set up at Iran’s Parchin military complex. The confidential IAEA report obtained by the AP on Wednesday confirmed their statements.

Of course, did Danilenko help Iran build an explosion chamber? He has a patent [USSR Patent No. SU 181329 A3, Priority May 12 (1991)] for these and has built one for his son-in-law’s company Elit which has a picture of it on its website. He himself does not talk about it. Likely because he has the usual confidentiality/non-disclosure clause in his contracts with Iran like all consultants all over the world have in theirs. But the building of a detonation chamber does not prove anything nefarious. Indeed one needs such a chamber if one wants to create nanodiamonds. There is nothing in the IAEA report that proves that the chamber has been used for anything related to nuclear work.

These anonymous diplomats (American? Israeli?) also come up with another “new” “conspicuous” issue. Notice the innuendo that is involved here:

The diplomats said some of those at the meeting also expressed their concerns about indications that nearly 20 kilograms — about 45 pounds — of a component used to arm nuclear warheads was unaccounted for in Iran.The IAEA has long known that Iran has drawings of how to form uranium metal into the fissile core of warheads. But the diplomats pointed to an inconspicuous section of Wednesday’s report — near the end, under “Other Matters” — revealing that an IAEA inspection in August came up 19.8 kilograms, or 43.56 pounds, short of what Iran says it had stored.

See how “fissile core of warheads” is put next to a few kilograms of allegedly missing unidentified stuff implying that this stuff has made it into such a warhead. A simple look into the IAEA report (page 9) tells us that this stuff is nothing usable:

In August 2011, the Agency carried out a PIV at the Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Research Laboratory (JHL) to verify, inter alia, nuclear material, in the form of natural uranium metal and process waste, related to the conversion experiments carried out by Iran between 1995 and 2002. The Agency’s measurement of this material was 19.8 kg less than the operator’s declaration of 270.7 kg. In a letter dated 2 November 2011, Iran provided additional information on this matter. The Agency is working with Iran to try to resolve this discrepancy.

So there is a 7% discrepancy in weighing the stored WASTE and natural, not-enriched Uranium from quite old experiments. Are we to believe that Iran can now make a “fissile core for warheads” from old process waste? Or is it more likely that this is one of the simple discrepancies of byproduct measurement that seem to occur in every second IAEA report and is usually explained in the following one?

Onto the second pillar of the IAEA “evidence”.

The 2005 “laptop of death” “alleged studies” documents focus on three areas: the so-called “green salt project” to provide a source of uranium, high-explosives testing and re-engineering a Shahab-3 missile load chamber to fit a nuclear warhead. One wonders how papers, reportedly written in English, from three very distinct technical fields, have made it onto one laptop which then miraculously ended up in the hands of the “western” secret service that provided it to the IAEA.

Robert Kelley is an American nuclear engineer and former IAEA inspector who now works on non-proliferation at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). As an IAEA inspector he personally reviewed the “alleged studies” papers when those were handed to the IAEA and he does not believe that they are reliable evidence:

“The first is the issue of forgeries. There is nothing to tell that those documents are real,” says Kelley, whose experience includes inspections from as far afield as Iraq and Libya, to South Africa in 1993.”My sense when I went through the documents years ago was that there was possibly a lot of stuff in there that was genuine, [though] it was kind of junk,” says Kelly. “And there were a few rather high-quality things” like the green salt document: “That was two or three pages that wasn’t related to anything else in the package, it was on a different topic, and you just wondered, was this salted in there for someone to find?”

It would not be the first time that data was planted. He recalls 1993 and 1994, when the IAEA received “very complex forgeries” on Iraq that slowed down nuclear investigations there by a couple of years.

So we have Danilenko’s work, the first set of the IAEA’s “evidence”, precise detonations, hemispherical formed sets of explosives and a detonation chamber, all of which is plausibly explained through his cooperation with Iran’s work on nanodiamonds. While these technologies could eventually also be used in nuclear weapon research there is nothing in the IAEA report annex that proves that Iran has actually applied them towards anything nuclear.

We also have some stuff from the “laptop of death” which Robert Kelley regards as possible forgeries and planted evidence. Kelley as well as Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at SIPRI are unconvinced that all the above adds up to a clear case against Iran:

“Yes, Iran is making progress, they’ve covered the waterfront in terms of the main technical areas that you need to develop a nuclear weapon,” says Mr. Kile. “But there is no evidence they have a dedicated program under way. It’s not like they are driving toward nuclear weapons; it’s like they’re meandering toward capability.”
…
For Kelley, formerly with the IAEA, the current Iran report is a “real mish-mash” that includes some “amateurish analysis.”Among several technical points, Kelley notes the report’s discussion of Iran’s “exploding bridge-wire detonators,” or EBWs. The IAEA report said it recognizes that “there exist non-nuclear applications, albeit few,” and point to a likely weapons connection for Iran.

“The Agency is wrong. There are lots of applications for EBWs,” says Kelley. “To be wrong on this point, and then to try to misdirect opinion shows a bias towards their desired outcome…. That is unprofessional.”

Both pillars of the IAEA Report Annex that are supposed to prove work on nuclear weapons in Iran are very weak. Unless something proves that Danilenko’s work in Iran was not for civilian purposes and that the “alleged studies” “evidence” is not just forgery it is impossible to accept the IAEA’s report annex as something that would stand up in a trial and could support a case for punishment.

It is no wonder that the former director of the IAEA El Baradei rejected the publishing of such a report. It took the more pliable new IAEA director Amano, installed with U.S. help, to discredit the IAEA by publishing a report which the former inspector Kelley calls “unprofessional” “mish-mash”.

Based on this weak report the U.S. is pressing for more sanctions on Iran but as Russia, China and many other states do not buy the case the IAEA tried to make there is little chance for that to happen.

We can thereby expect more dirt to be thrown at Iran by anonymous “diplomats” in the hope that the media will stay as uncritical towards their claims as they so far have been. It may be that believable evidence of a nuclear weapon program in Iran may emerge one future day. So far it has not.

November 12, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Iranian “laptop of death” as suspicious today as in 2005

By Jasmin Ramsey | LobeLog | November 11th, 2011

The Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Peterson reports on continued suspicions that were raised about the authenticity of the information presented in the so-called Iranian “laptop of death”–2005 information which the latest IAEA report is repeating.

Not only is the information that’s being publicized about Iran’s alleged nuclear activities “not new“, it’s also based/builds on information that was doubted by experts in the first place.

News reports at the time indicated deep skepticism, when some of the laptop contents were first shown to diplomats accredited to the IAEA. In many quarters, doubt still persists. Recognizing such skepticism, one portion of the IAEA report was devoted to addressing the credibility of the information. But Mr. Kelly, the former IAEA inspector who also served as a department director at the agency, remains unconvinced.

“The first is the issue of forgeries. There is nothing to tell that those documents are real,” says Kelley, whose experience includes inspections from as far afield as Iraq and Libya, to South Africa in 1993.

“My sense when I went through the documents years ago was that there was possibly a lot of stuff in there that was genuine, [though] it was kind of junk,” says Kelly. “And there were a few rather high-quality things” like the green salt document: “That was two or three pages that wasn’t related to anything else in the package, it was on a different topic, and you just wondered, was this salted in there for someone to find?”

It would not be the first time that data was planted. He recalls 1993 and 1994, when the IAEA received “very complex forgeries” on Iraq that slowed down nuclear investigations there by a couple of years.

“Those documents had markings on them, and were designed to resemble Iraqi documents, but when we dug into them they were clearly forgeries,” adds Kelley. “They were designed by a couple of member states in that region, and provided to the Agency maliciously to slow things down.”

November 11, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Moon of Alabama catches two major nuclear-related lies in one month

Arnold Evans | Middle East Reality | November 7, 2011

Not much for me to add here. First the US and Western nuclear policy communities were astir over the idea that a yarn-knitting facility in Syria was actually a planned centrifuge facility. It turns out, and members of the Western nuclear policy community now admit, that the accusation was just false.

I want to give full credit for that to “b” from Moon of Alabama here.

Shortly thereafter, we learned that there is supposedly a steel tube in Iran that can be used to test triggers for nuclear devices. The expertise to use this tube was supposedly transferred to Iran from a Ukrainian nuclear weapons scientist named Vyacheslav Danilenko.

Danilenko is not a nuclear scientist but works on an industrial process that makes small diamonds used industrially to polish smooth surfaces.

Thanks again to b at MoonOfAlabama. A place I need to visit more frequently.

So what does this all mean?

There is exactly one reason Iran having technology that could in theory be used to create a nuclear weapon is more sinister than Japan or Brazil having such technology. Iran is close to Israel and Brazil is not.

Barack Obama, David Sanger – one of the New York Times’ primary scare-mongers regarding Iran – and David Albright – one the the Western press’ main sources for anti-Iran nuclear information – are each committed to the idea that Israel must have a nuclear advantage over all of its neighbors and are each willing to blatantly lie if necessary toward that end.

Once the United States committed that six million Jewish people must be dominant over more than 400 million people in the region, then modern colonialism in the US’ relations with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others, murders of scientists, sanctions, government-created computer viruses and attempts to deny industrialization and large swaths of technology to large populations follow directly from that commitment.

Obama, Sanger and Albright are proponents of that commitment. Distortions and lies meant to harm Iran for Israel’s sake are going to come from these three faster than even b can debunk them.

November 10, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The New IAEA Report on Iran: An Initial Response to the Explosive Reactions… of the Press

Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep In America | November 8, 2011

The leaking of the newest IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program has predictably sent the media into a fear-mongering frenzy.

The Jerusalem Post giddily reports that the IAEA says “the Islamic Republic was working to develop a nuclear-weapon design and was conducting extensive research and tests that could only be relevant for such a weapon.”

The New York Times‘ Sanger and Broad published a story entitled “U.N. Agency Says Iran Data Points to A-Bomb Work,” The Washington Post‘s Joby Warrick noted the exposure of “secret nuclear research by Iran,” Reuters‘ Fredrik Dahl and Sylvia Westall reported that “Iran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be conducting secret research,” Ha’aretz‘s Yossi Melman declared that “Iran has been working toward building a nuclear weapon since 2003,” and Associated Press‘ George Jahn wrote that “the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is its most unequivocal yet suggesting that Iran is using the cover of a peaceful nuclear program to produce atomic weaponry.”

The Guardian writes that Iran “may be researching nuclear warhead”, the BBC said Iran is “studying nuclear weapons”, the Financial Times got in on the action by stating that “Iran has sought to design a nuclear warhead and has continued to conduct research on an atomic weapons programme,” the Los Angeles Times reported that “credible evidence indicates Iran may be secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon,” while CNN posted headline “Iran developing nuclear bombs,” despite going on to report that the IAEA has “found no evidence that Iran has made a strategic decision to actually build a bomb.”

Curiously, as of this writing, Commentary‘s Michael Rubin has so far stayed away from actually commenting on the report, posting only some excerpts from the document instead, and The Weekly Standard has yet to weigh in at all.

Anyone familiar with the history of IAEA reports on Iran will find very little in the way of revelation in the 13-page “bombshell” that everyone seems to be freaking out about. It’s big on fluff, weak on substance.

Most of the allegations, described for the first time at great length and in minute detail, are resurrected claims, the so-called “alleged studies documentation” – long known to rest somewhere on the spectrum of dubious to fabricated – gleaned from a mysterious, stolen laptop. Because of its questionable origin and authenticity, the IAEA has consistently shied away from giving such information much credence.

As a result, the agency has in the past been accused by “senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials” of “hiding data on Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear arms.” In response, IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire issued this statement:

“Regrettably, time and again unidentified sources feed the media and Member States with misinformation or misinterpretation. This time around, there are articles claiming that the Secretariat is hiding information, and that there are sharp disagreements among staff members involved about the contents of the report. Needless to say, such allegations have no basis in fact.”

In 2009, the IAEA “admitted that some of the material in the now-infamous ‘secret annex’ about Iran’s nuclear program exists, but claims it wasn’t verifiable enough to release.” Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy reported that “the classified information…was collected as part of the IAEA’s annual volume on Iran but never made the final cut” due to the fact that IAEA authorities “decided they weren’t confident in the authenticity of the information contained in the extra document, and they couldn’t verify what that research had found.”

In October 2009, IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei explained, “The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponisation studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents.”

It appears that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, the U.S.’ man in Vienna, who in 2009 said, “I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this,” when asked whether he thought Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, has decided to change his mind.

For its part, the IAEA does its best to sound serious. By way of introducing the supposedly damning “Annex” section of its new report, the IAEA purports to having obtained “a large volume of documentation (including correspondence, reports, view graphs from presentations, videos and engineering drawings), amounting to over a thousand pages,” documentation “of a technically complex and interconnected nature, showing research, development and testing activities over time.”

The report concludes, “The information which serves as the basis for the Agency’s analysis and concerns, as identified in the Annex, is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible.”

The insertion of the word “overall” and without going into specifics about which documents were verifiable and which were not is but one indication that the IAEA itself may not be wholly buying what it’s trying to sell.

Additionally, at the beginning of certain subcategories of the detailed “Annex”, the report gives brief explanations of various aspects of nuclear weaponization, information that one would expect any member of the IAEA Board of Governors to already know. For example, the section about “Nuclear components for an explosive device,” opens with this tutorial: “For use in a nuclear device, HEU retrieved from the enrichment process is first converted to metal. The metal is then cast and machined into suitable components for a nuclear core.” The next section, labeled “Detonator development,” begins, “The development of safe, fast-acting detonators, and equipment suitable for firing the detonators, is an integral part of a programme to develop an implosion type nuclear device.” The section marked, “Initiation of high explosives and associated experiments,” explains that “Detonators provide point source initiation of explosives, generating a naturally diverging detonation wave. In an implosion type nuclear explosive device, an additional component, known as a multipoint initiation system, can be used to reshape the detonation wave into a converging smooth implosion to ensure uniform compression of the core fissile material to supercritical density,” while the “Hydrodynamic experiments” section begins, “One necessary step in a nuclear weapon development programme is determining whether a theoretical design of an implosion device, the behaviour of which can be studied through computer simulations, will work in practice.”

Introductions like these to sections heavy on technicalities and minutiae give the impression that the intended audience for this report is not a panel of experts and Agency ambassadors familiar with nuclear physics, but rather a malleable media and a gullibly alarmist public.

Whereas a lot of ground already covered regarding allegations of weapons research before 2003 is rehashed in the report, there is little in the way of new charges. In fact, the IAEA admits, “The Agency’s ability to construct an equally good understanding of activities in Iran after the end of 2003 is reduced due to the more limited information available to the Agency.”

The report cites information provided by two unnamed member states (Palau and Vanuatu, perhaps?) claiming that in 2008 and 2009, conducted studies involving “the modelling of spherical geometries, consisting of components of the core of an HEU nuclear device subjected to shock compression, for their neutronic behaviour at high density, and a determination of the subsequent nuclear explosive yield.” The IAEA says “[t]he application of such studies to anything other than a nuclear explosive is unclear to the Agency.”

Furthermore, one paragraph of the report states, “In an interview in 2007 with a member of the clandestine nuclear supply network, the Agency was told that Iran had been provided with nuclear explosive design information. From information provided to the Agency during that interview, the Agency is concerned that Iran may have obtained more advanced design information than the information identified in 2004 as having been provided to Libya by the nuclear supply network.” (GOV/2011/65 C4.35)

If true (there are is no source material or footnoted reference available for this particular claim), it’s curious to note that the same year, IAEA head Mohammad ElBaradei told the press in Washington D.C., “I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now.” Shortly thereafter, in February 2008, ElBaradei told the IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors, “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.”

In September 2009, the IAEA “reiterated that the body has no concrete proof that Iran has or has ever had a nuclear weapons programme,” and a month later, ElBaradei said, “I have been making it very clear that with regard to these alleged studies, we have not seen any use of nuclear material, we have not received any information that Iran has manufactured any part of a nuclear weapon or component. That’s why I say, to present the Iran threat as imminent is hype.”

One wonders what makes the 2007 interview with the “member of the clandestine nuclear supply network” so compelling now.

Despite all the allegations and supposed evidence found in the latest report, the IAEA still “continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs [locations outside facilities, all of which are situated within hospitals] declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement,” as it has numerous times a year for nearly a decade. This verification, as affirmed in Article 2 of the IAEA’s 1974 Safeguards Agreement with Iran, is the agency’s “exclusive purpose” with respect to the Iranian nuclear program.

Overall, the release and subsequent fallout of this report, as has been the case so many years now with similar attempts to stoke fear about Iran, feels a lot like this scene from the brilliant 1983 John Landis film Trading Places, with the United States and Israel playing the part of Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and Iran as Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy).

Unfortunately, it appears IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, whose independence and credibility may be irreparably damaged due to his decision to kowtow to Western demands and provide ample fuel to the warmongers’ fire, is unaware that “it ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.”

November 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment