on Iran’s nuclear program and has gone into overdrive in a desperate effort to counter it.
The regime is essentially resorting to its classic two tactics for dealing with inconvenient developments—first, go on the attack, and, second, try to divert attention.
The first or attack tactic was clearly represented by comments last week by Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who said the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proves that its director general, Yukiya Amano, is hostile to Iran. Larijani said the IAEA report had been dictated to Amano by the United States. He characterized Amano as subservient to Washington.
The second tactic, diversion, was represented by President Ahmadi-nejad’s comments asking why the IAEA has never issued a report on US nuclear weapons while it has spent years issuing quarterly reports on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. The answer is that the Non-Proliferation Treaty recognizes the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France as nuclear states. But many countries in the developing world are bothered by the IAEA focus on Iran rather than on disarmament.
There is also talk in Iran, probably orchestrated, of quitting the Non-Proliferation Treaty and leaving the IAEA. A group of 47 student associations last week signed a statement calling on the Majlis to take Iran out of the treaty and the IAEA. Very quickly, Majlis deputies started lining up behind the idea.
It is doubtful Iran would take such an action as it would most likely turn nations that are now neutral against Iran. But many in Iran think the threat of withdrawal scares the West because the IAEA would then be unable to carry out inspections in Iran and would be blind to what was going on.
Around the world there has been much misunderstanding of what the IAEA report says. Much of that is due to poor and erroneous reporting in many media outlets.
The Daily Mail in London led off its story by saying, “Iran could start building a nuclear bomb in a matter of months, the UN atomic watchdog warned yesterday.” The IAEA said nothing of the sort.
The Daily Telegraph of London led its story, “A damning report by the United Nations nuclear inspectors has for the first time accused Iran of working to acquire atomic weapons.” That isn’t what the report said either.
NBC News reported: “Western nations are weighing their options after the UN reported for the first time Tuesday that Iran is conducting secret tests with the sole purpose of building nuclear weapons and has made more progress than ever before.” That is also not what the IAEA said.
The New York Times got all the nuances in line and reported accurately: “United Nations weapons inspectors have amassed a trove of new evidence that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.”
The nuances are important. It is also important that the IAEA said not a solitary word about when Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon, although many politicians and commentators are running around asserting, completely falsely, that the IAEA says an Iranian bomb is just months away.
While stopping short – just – of concluding that Iran has an ongoing bomb program, the Agency described work by Iran for which the only plausible purpose is to make nuclear weapons. That is the point of the IAEA report. It listed 10 programs for which it has found evidence of Iranian work. Some of those programs could be applied to non-weapon projects. But taken all together, they are the components of a program dedicated to building a nuclear weapon and fitting it onto a missile.
As summarized by the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, those 10 are:
* Computer modeling of implosion, compression, and nuclear yield, as recently as 2009;
* High explosive tests simulating a nuclear explosion but using non-nuclear material, in order to see whether an implosion device would work;
* The construction of at least one containment vessel at a military site—Parchin, near Tehran—in which to conduct such high explosive tests;
* Studies on an initiation system used in nuclear detonation, in order to ensure uniform compression of an implosion device, including at least one large scale experiment in 2003, and experimental research after 2003;
* Support from a foreign expert, former Soviet weapon scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko, in developing the initiation system and a crucial diagnostic system to monitor the detonation experiments;
* Manufacture of a neutron initiator, which is placed in the core of an implosion device and, when compressed, generates neutrons to start a nuclear chain reaction, along with validation studies on the initiator design from 2006 onward;
* The development of exploding bridgewire detonators (EBWs) used in simultaneous detonation, which are needed to initiate an implosive shock wave in fission bombs;
* The development of high voltage firing equipment that would allow a new payload to be detonated in the air, above a target, which would only make sense for a nuclear payload;
* Testing of high voltage firing equipment to ensure that it could fire EBWs over long distances, which is needed for nuclear weapon testing, when a device might be located down a deep shaft;
* A program to integrate a new spherical payload onto Iran’s Shahab-3 missile, of a size that would accommodate the high explosive and detonation packages described above.
