UN has new Iranian nuke arms claims

GEORGE JAHN

Asso­ci­ated Press

VIENNA — The U.N. atomic agency plans to reveal intel­li­gence next week sug­gest­ing Iran made com­puter mod­els of a nuclear war­head and other pre­vi­ously undis­closed details on alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms, diplo­mats told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Friday.

Other new con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency plans to share with its 35 board mem­bers will include satel­lite imagery of what the IAEA believes is a large steel con­tainer used for nuclear arms-related high explo­sives tests, the diplo­mats said.

The agency has pre­vi­ously listed activ­i­ties it says indi­cate pos­si­ble secret nuclear weapons work by Iran, which has been under IAEA perusal for nearly a decade over sus­pi­cions that it might be inter­ested in develop such arms.

But the newest com­pi­la­tion of sus­pected weapons-related work is sig­nif­i­cant in sub­stance and scope. The diplo­mats say they will reveal sus­pi­cions that have not been pre­vi­ously made pub­lic and greatly expand on alleged weapons-related exper­i­ments that have been pub­lished in pre­vi­ous reports on Iran’s nuclear activities.

It also comes as the drum­beat of reports about pos­si­ble mil­i­tary action against Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties intensifies.

Israeli Pres­i­dent Shi­mon Peres said Fri­day that inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is closer to pur­su­ing a mil­i­tary solu­tion to the stand­off over Iran’s nuclear pro­gram than a diplo­matic one. The com­ments, from a known dove, assumed added sig­nif­i­cance because they fol­lowed unsub­stan­ti­ated reports that Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu was seek­ing his government’s sup­port for a strike against Tehran.

British media have sep­a­rately cited unnamed British offi­cials as say­ing Lon­don was pre­pared to offer mil­i­tary sup­port to any U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In Vienna, the diplo­mats — from IAEA mem­ber nations — asked for anonymity because their infor­ma­tion was priv­i­leged. One of them said the mate­r­ial drawn up by IAEA chief Yukiya Amano will be in an annex run­ning around 12 pages and attached to the lat­est of a reg­u­lar series of agency reports on Iran’s nuclear enrich­ment pro­gram and other activ­i­ties that could be used to arm nuclear missiles.

Pre­vi­ously undis­closed infor­ma­tion con­tained in the annex, said the diplo­mats, will include:

— Intel­li­gence from unnamed mem­ber states that a bus-sized steel con­tainer, located at the Iran­ian mil­i­tary base of Parchin is likely being used for nuclear-related high explo­sives test­ing of the kind needed to release an atomic blast. The agency has satel­lite imagery of the container.

— Expanded evi­dence that Iran­ian engi­neers worked on com­puter mod­els of nuclear pay­loads for missiles.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, said the diplo­mats, these alleged exper­i­ments took place after 2003 — the year that Iran was believed to have stopped secret work on nuclear weapons, accord­ing to a 2007 U.S. intel­li­gence assess­ment. But diplo­mats have told the AP that Tehran con­tin­ued arms-related exper­i­ments in a less con­cen­trated way after that date, a view reflected by recent IAEA reports that have detailed sus­pi­cions that such work may be con­tin­u­ing up to the present.

The annex will also say that more than 10 nations have sup­plied intel­li­gence sug­gest­ing Iran is secretly devel­op­ing com­po­nents of a nuclear arms pro­gram — among them an implosion-type war­head that it wants to mount on a bal­lis­tic missile.

It says that two for­eign “sources” — appar­ently coun­tries or non­govern­ment groups within coun­tries — have helped Iran develop a weapons design, with­out nam­ing them. And it details how Iran bought “dual use” — peace­ful or mil­i­tary — nuclear tech­nol­ogy from the black mar­ket net­work of rene­gade Pak­istani sci­en­tist A. Q. Khan, as well as alleged prepa­ra­tions for a nuclear weapons test.

The upcom­ing report is meant to ratchet up pres­sure on the Islamic repub­lic to stop four years of stonewalling of IAEA experts seek­ing to fol­low up intel­li­gence of such secret weapons-related experiments.

Iran denies such activ­i­ties, assert­ing that they are based on intel­li­gence fab­ri­cated by Wash­ing­ton. It also denies that its ura­nium enrich­ment pro­gram — under U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil sanc­tions because it could man­u­fac­ture fis­sile war­head mate­r­ial — is meant for any­thing else but mak­ing nuclear fuel.

In his pre­vi­ous report in Sep­tem­ber, Amano said he was “increas­ingly con­cerned” about a stream of intel­li­gence sug­gest­ing that Iran con­tin­ues to work secretly on devel­op­ing a nuclear pay­load for a mis­sile and other com­po­nents of a nuclear weapons program.

He said “many mem­ber states” are pro­vid­ing evi­dence for that assess­ment, describ­ing the infor­ma­tion the agency is receiv­ing as cred­i­ble, “exten­sive and comprehensive.”

That report warned of the “pos­si­ble exis­tence in Iran of past or cur­rent undis­closed nuclear related activ­i­ties” linked to weapons work. In par­tic­u­lar, said the report, the agency con­tin­ues to receive new infor­ma­tion about “activ­i­ties related to the devel­op­ment of a nuclear pay­load for a missile.”

Acquired from “many” mem­ber states, the infor­ma­tion pos­sessed by the IAEA is “exten­sive and com­pre­hen­sive … (and) broadly con­sis­tent and cred­i­ble,” said the report.

The U.S. and its West­ern allies on the Secu­rity Coun­cil hope the upcom­ing report will be strong enough to per­suade the IAEA board at its mid-November meet­ing to report it anew to the coun­cil. It was the board that first referred Iran to the Secu­rity Coun­cil in 2006 — a move that led to a series of sanc­tions pun­ish­ing Tehran for its nuclear defiance.

If that fails, they would like a board res­o­lu­tion set­ting a dead­line of only a few months for Iran to start coop­er­at­ing with the agency’s probe — or face the prospect of renewed Secu­rity Coun­cil refer­ral at the next board meet­ing in March.

One of the diplo­mats said that Iran was given a copy of the annex ear­lier this week, giv­ing a chance for com­ment that would be included when the report is shared with board mem­bers. Iran ini­tially refused to accept a copy of the report, he said, reflect­ing its rejec­tion of the allegations.

A call request­ing com­ment left on the cell phone of Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief del­e­gate to the IAEA, was not imme­di­ately returned.

Posted by AP News on Nov 4 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.