The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday it confronted Iran for the first time with Western intelligence reports showing work linked to making atomic bombs and that Tehran had failed to provide satisfactory answers.
The United States passed the intelligence, which came mainly from a laptop spirited out of Iran, to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 but out of fear for its spies only authorized the IAEA to present it last month, diplomats said.
The IAEA said Iran had dismissed the intelligence as "baseless" or "fabricated", but had provided increased cooperation on other issues in the past few months.
Iran's increased transparency amounted to a doubled-edged sword as it reaffirmed Tehran was forging ahead with uranium enrichment in defiance of U.N. Security Council demands to stop all proliferation-sensitive nuclear activity.
The IAEA findings, which also said Iran had failed to clear up all outstanding questions by an agreed February deadline, may spur the Security Council to adopt a third round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic as early as next week.
But that's not th e "bombshell" so to speak.
In unusually strong wording, the IAEA said in a report Iran had not so far explained documentation pointing to undeclared efforts to "weaponise" nuclear materials by linking uranium processing with explosives and designing of a missile warhead.
Publishing details of the intelligence, the IAEA described tests on a 400-metre (1,300 ft) firing shaft seen as "relevant" to atomic arms research and a schematic layout of a missile cone "quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device".
That is. Iran may have indeed "publicly" abandoned it's pursuits of nuclear weapons, but there is ample evidence that they are simply doing a better job of hiding it. Now, with the IAEA finally getting off it's ass, at least a little bit, it puts China and Russia in a tough spot. Do they risk a known terrorist sponsoring nation to gain nuclear weapons with hard evidence, or do they end up looking like they only care about their economies. If it's the latter, then perhaps they shouldn't be permanent members of the UN Security Council, because they cannot keep up with their responsibilities.
One crucial requirement was for Iran to implement the IAEA's Additional Protocol, which allows snap inspections that could verify that Tehran is not engaged in secret bomb work beyond declared civilian atomic energy sites.
Without that there could be "no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program", said the IAEA.
Keep painting, the corner is right over there.
But Iran, the world's fourth largest crude oil producer, said the IAEA report had reaffirmed its program was for peaceful purposes.
"I congratulate the Iranian nation for this success and victory which was a result of their resistance on (the country's) nuclear rights," chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said. "From our viewpoint this issue has ended."
I wonder if the Iraqi Information Minister has gotten himself a new job in Iran as public relations? You all remember him right? "The American's aren't within 100 miles of Baghdad".
Travis
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