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Green Salt and Nuclear Laptop: New IAEA Report Says Iran Answers Some Questions, Still Has Others to Answer
The UN atomic watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has a new report out on Iran (.pdf).
I confess it would take me a very long time and several dictionaries to penetrate its highly technical language. So I turned to one of the smartest nonproliferation experts I know, Jacqueline Shire, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), for highlights. "I think that paragraphs 35-42 are the most negative for Iran," Shire says, "Though the IAEA would say that they are just now receiving the info from the US necessary for confronting/challenging Iran's claims of fabrication."
The paragraphs Shire points to are in a section of the IAEA report called "Alleged Studies." They describe in dry, bullet-point form and highly technical language a quiet drama: how IAEA officials in late January and early February presented information handed over after a battle getting it from the U.S. government that concern questions of something called the so-called "Green Salt Project" and an alleged Iranian nuclear laptop that the US government obtained. Iran in turn called some of that American-sourced evidence "fabrications," on other points, the IAEA said it was still awaiting an Iranian response.
The New York Times reported on IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's battle to get the evidence from the Americans earlier this week:
The Bush administration has agreed to turn over to international inspectors intelligence data it has collected that it says proves Iran worked on developing a nuclear weapon until a little more than four years ago, according to American and foreign diplomats.
The decision reverses the United States' longstanding refusal to share the data, citing the need to protect intelligence sources.
The administration acted as the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to issue a report as early as next week on Iran's past nuclear activities. Administration officials hope that the nuclear inspectors can now confront Iran with what the Americans believe is the strongest evidence that the Iranians had a nuclear program.
The Bush administration's refusal to turn over the data has been a source of friction with Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, who has argued that Iran must be given a fair chance to examine some of the case that Washington has developed.
But it remains unclear how much of the data Dr. ElBaradei will be allowed to disclose to the Iranians. In particular, it is not clear if the information includes diagrams and designs that were secretly taken out of Iran on a laptop computer in 2004 and turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency. ...
According to American and foreign officials interviewed about the contents of the laptop, the information found there included descriptions of the so-called Green Salt Project. That project, which involved uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design, demonstrated what the agency suspected were links between Iran's military and its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program. If that evidence were substantiated, it would undercut Iran's claims that its program is aimed solely at producing electrical power.
The documents on the laptop described two programs, termed L-101 and L-102 by the Iranians, describing designs and computer simulations that appeared to be related to weapons work. ...
The presentation included selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments that, according to the American officials, showed a longstanding effort to design what appeared to be a nuclear warhead or similar "re-entry vehicle." ...
For the technical minded, you can check out the relevant section of the IAEA report (.pdf) yourselves.
Shire also notes that it is "interesting that the cascades continue to underperform." Her organization, ISIS, later offered this analysis (.pdf) elaborating on that observation:
In a conversation with a senior IAEA official, ISIS learned more about the P1 centrifuges' underperformance. Apparently, of the 1,670kg of uranium hexafluoride introduced into the cascade, some 400 kilograms remains in a "process buffer" between the initial feed location and the cascades, with the result that the natural uranium has not yet entered the actual cascades. This reduces the actual feed for the purposes of estimating the amount of low enriched uranium produced over the last 12 month period to 1,270 kg. ...,
Furthermore, ISIS says:
Two items stand out in the latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program. The first is that in all but two areas, Iran made progress in addressing unresolved issues outlined in the so-called Workplan agreed upon in August 2007. In the IAEA's assessment, Iran has provided plausible explanations for sources of uranium contamination found on equipment at a technical
university, its research into Polonium-210 and activities at the Gchine uranium mine. [...]
Iran also insists that procurement by the Physics Research Center for items such as balancing machines, magnets, fluorine handling equipment, and mass spectrometers, which could be useful in uranium enrichment or conversion activities, was all intended for other purposes, primarily educational. [...]
A bigger issue identified in the report is Iran's continued stonewalling on the information contained in the "laptop documents" and from other member states, referred to by the IAEA as the "alleged studies."
How solid is the US intelligence that ElBaradei battled to get and confront the Iranians with? "It comes from this so-called laptop and I believe is fairly solid (unless it was totally fabricated, which given the complexity of the stuff seems unlikely despite what the Iranians claim)," Shire says, pointing to this 2006 Dafna Linzer piece, "Strong Leads and Dead Ends in Nuclear Case Against Iran," as the most comprehensive yet on the topic.
Shire adds that commenter Hass (below) makes a valid point: "The report does acknowledge significant progress in resolving outstanding issues (Gchine mine, Polonium, uranium contamination)," Shire emails. "In pointing to the negative part I was just trying to highlight the meat of what would be controversial - not obscure the good news."
You're skipping over lightly some significant issues, for example that Iran has cleared up the past issues, and that the evidence from the US is highly questionable (to put it politely.)
Iran and the IAEA listed their "outstanding issue" in the Aug 2007 agreement and the "modalities" to resovle them.
The Nov 2007 IAEA said that 9 of those "outstanding issues" had in fact been resolved.
The current report says that all the remaining issues have also been resolved. And there's still no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
The "alleged studies" are called "alleged" because the only evidence of their existence is from the US which claims got it from a laptop computer which it claims came from Iran...or was simply a fake. The fact that this evidence is all the US has been able to cook up against Iran speaks volumes.
I suggest reading IranAffairs which has covered these issues in great detail.
I don't get so if a laptop has research for bomb making does that mean a country is building those bombs? we all know people research things on their own. just look at teenagers researching pipe bombs doesn't mean schools are teaching students how to build bombs.
Hmed, good question.
Check out this piece on the laptop:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR200602...
From it:
...Other suggestive evidence is cloaked in similar uncertainty. Contained in a laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004 are designs by a firm called Kimeya Madon for a small-scale facility to produce uranium gas, the construction of which would give Iran a secret stock that could be enriched for fuel or for bombs. Also on the laptop -- obtained by U.S. intelligence -- were drawings on modifying Iran's ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead. Beyond the computer files, an imprisoned Pakistani arms dealer recently offered uncorroborated statements that Iran received several advanced centrifuges, equipment that would vastly improve its nuclear knowledge.
U.S. intelligence considers the laptop documents authentic but cannot prove it. Analysts cannot completely rule out the possibility that internal opponents of the Iranian leadership could have forged them to implicate the government, or that the documents were planted by Tehran itself to convince the West that its program remains at an immature stage.
CIA analysts, some of whom had been involved only a year earlier on the flawed assessments of Iraq's weapons programs, initially speculated that a third country, such as Israel, may have fabricated the evidence. But they eventually discounted that theory.
British intelligence, asked for a second opinion, concurred last year that the documents appear authentic. German and French officials consider the information troubling, sources said, but Russian experts have dismissed it as inconclusive. IAEA inspectors, who were highly skeptical of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, have begun to pursue aspects of the laptop information that appear to bolster previous leads.
"There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence," one U.S. source acknowledged. "But it's such a large body of documents and such strong indications of nuclear weapons intent, and nothing seems so inconsistent."
Bush administration officials, convinced that Iran has a weapons program, believe that the body of documentation is the nearest anyone can expect to "smoking gun" evidence. But even in the U.S. government, the predominant interpretation is more complex. And any step toward uranium enrichment, experts said, is consistent with three competing explanations -- that Iran's program is peaceful, that it aims for a weapon, or that the Tehran government is still keeping its options open. ...
Actually, the know-how to build nuclear weapons is in the public domain. See this BBC report for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1931103.stm
SInce when do countries do sensitive secret nuclear studies on laptops that can be stolen? The fact that it is detailed doesn't prove anything -- the US has pretty detailed info on building nukes that it can pass off.
Question: why did the US only now selectively provide some of the Laptop info to the IAEA, after years of shopping it around as evidence of Iranian perfidy? Why is it that the IAEA has thus far, after 5 years of intensive investigations, never run into the alleged "Green Salt" project? Note what the IAEA report itself says about these alleged studies:
"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...With the exception of the issue of the alleged studies, which remains outstanding, the Agency has no concrete information about possible current undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran."
Note how the US only provided (partially) the "alleged studies" at the last minute to the IAEA --
From "Associated Press" (http://tinyurl.com/yvn2xe)
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 uestionable 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.
The Israelis and the Likud Party supporters in America through AIPAC will insure that Bush attack Iran before he leaves. The Democratic Party is too weak to stop him.
Our current service members who have had Repeated, and extended deployments to war zones, had a dramatic rise in post-traumatic stress.VA didn't suspend one of its study and notify patients of the possible dangers of Chantix after the Food and Drug Administration issued a communication Nov. 20, 2007, about an ongoing safety review of the drug because of reports of suicidal thoughts and aggressive and erratic behavior in some patients. 120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week could the use of chantix be included in these numbers.Our country is still ignoring the cries of our vets If don't take the medicine proscribed to you by the VA medical center, you are refusing treatment will leave you with no medical care. No one tells you that you may be taking an experimental drug or not.Veterans Medical Research Foundation do not normally provide any other form of compensation But,If you are injured as a result of participation in this research, treatment will be available. Depleted uranium
,ALS, and countless others illnesses are earmarked for new testing that needs to be researched,since we are more like lab rats,and cash cows then American veterans they well be more studies ,more grants and industry sponsorships, and deaths at the hands of VA Medical Center (VAMC)and their team Researchers are for the purpose of conducting a clinical
Trials. The VAMC typically will provide resources such as facilities, personnel, and equipment,veterans and
The collaborator may provide resources as well as funding for the effort. Where funds are also provided
By the industry sponsors, a Non-profit Education and Research Corporation using experimental drugs on our veterans. Our veterans are in a hopeless situations.Congress has turn a blind eye because of their 1986 agreement with the VA and their Non-profit Education and Research Corporation.We where sold out, It may be good to support your troops That are serving our interest, but it is better to demand a accountability from those responsible for the lack of their care.The VA has difficulty in the preparation, processing and analysis of veterans information to support the effective and efficient preparation of the VA's hundreds of thousands of veterans claims.The fact that VA hospitals are turning away those most in needs is utterly disgusting. Those in charge of VA hospitals need to take responsibility for their lack actions.They need to focus veteran care and less on veteran experiment ion. I, keep hearing that this is the 21st century, Can someone please tell Congress to please make the VA join it! They could make the claim process digital ?! I think the whole VA system needs a overhaul and very soon. With more and more wounded troops coming home the need is there for both physical and mental health issues. Our troops only deserve the best of all aspects of care! We do not take care of our own like we should, it's time that we start. Anybody who has ever encountered the VA medical system will be surprised by this. The entire operation is a horror show run mostly by lazy, self-important, arrogant and self satisfied bureaucrats who are more interested in getting grants for the Research Corporation run by Veterans Administration.One really must look into the Royalty income to VA that is accepted , and how they double dip the American people into budget year after year. This kind of double dipping as been going on since 1986 .
For those who are closely associated with regular active duty military, this type of treatment is the rule and not the exception Sad, but true.If certain serves cannot be provided for a veteran or military patient then they are suppose to be referred to a civilian facility , and there is suppose to be no cost to the service member or veteran. Many of our own go without and This shouldn't be a surprise for the VA system when it comes to treating any service related condition. In this situation, the Iraq and Afghans veterans is in the same boat as the Vietnam veteran was in the 1970's. At least now, they have a name for it, PTSD,and agent orange which has been proven, but the VA doesn't take it seriously the problems of our newer veterans! It's terrible that our country is ignoring the cries of our vets. THis Class action suit isn't about MONEY, Its about better treatment for our veterans. It's no surprise what is happening with our Syracuse Veterans Hospital ,and Central New York Research Corporation .Similar acts are occurring around the country.I've have made many attempts to talk with Mr Cody,Improving some programs like RECREATIONAL
THERAPY for veterans with PTSD ,but to this day he hasn't made any attempted to set up a meeting. I guess he is to self-important, arrogant, to address this matter but he is the head of the VA hospital in Syracuse NY. I, believe that Mr. Jim Cody any many like him, should tendered their resignations for the good of our veterans health and well-being . Dennis Thorp is a native of Frankfort NY. and served as a U.S. Army medic during the Vietnam War. Doctho@roadrunner
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