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IAEA Report: Iran Working on 'Nuclear Weapons' Kenneth R. Timmerman WASHINGTON -- As the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte was telling a congressional panel on Thursday that Iran's nuclear program was "a reason for immediate concern," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna circulated an internal report that referred to evidence that Iran was pursuing a "nuclear weapons" program.
It was the first time the IAEA has ever publicly referred to nuclear weapons activity in Iran, Western diplomats in Vienna told Newsmax.
The four-page report, prepared by the director of the IAEA's Safeguards Division, Ollie Heinonen, was a "bold departure" from earlier reports, one diplomat said, because it "explicitly referred twice to nuclear weapons" activity in Iran.
The report "raises new questions pointing to a military dimension" in Iran's nuclear programs, "including the fabrication of nuclear weapons components and the design of a missile re-entry vehicle," the diplomat added.
Heinonen has just returned from Iran, where he discovered new documents indicating that Iran had received technical data from the nuclear black market network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan for casting and machining hemispheres of enriched uranium.
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"We know of no application for such hemispheres other than nuclear weapons," Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph said on Wednesday in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs committee in Washington, D.C.
The documents Heinonen discovered included a 15-page description of the technical processes required to make nuclear bomb cores, which the Iranians refused to turn over to the IAEA inspectors. "That is a clear violation of Iran's obligations under its safeguards agreement and under the NPT," a Western diplomat told Newsmax in a phone interview from Vienna.
The Iranians told Heinonen that they had "never asked" the Khan network for the document, and that Khan "just gave it to them," the diplomat said.
Under the Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran ratified in 1970, non-nuclear weapons states such as Iran may not receive weapons-related information or technology, as a condition for gaining access to peaceful nuclear technology.
"Iran likes to talk about its rights," the diplomat said, "but they also have obligations. And they have failed to meet their obligations under the NPT repeatedly."
In Washington, Undersecretary of State Joseph accused Iran of "actively pursuing a nuclear weapons capability.
"Let me be clear about this. For almost 20 years, Iran systematically violated its IAEA safeguards and NPT obligations by hiding its nuclear fuel cycle efforts and conducting a covert program aimed at nuclear weapons. Teheran has admitted some of those efforts - but only after clandestine work had been publicly exposed," Joseph said.
Only Iran objected to a vote by the IAEA Board of Governors to release the internal four-page report, which could happen as early as Friday.
The report also detailed a secretive "Green Salt Project" in Iran, which showed that Iran had a parallel uranium conversion program at sites it has never declared to international inspectors. This is significant because Iran could use that undeclared nuclear material as feedstock for a secret uranium enrichment plant to make weapons.
In tandem to the secret conversion project, the report stated that Iran had carried out high explosive tests of a kind suggesting nuclear weapons research. It also stated that Iran had worked on a new design for a missile re-entry vehicle, apparently to accommodate a nuclear warhead.
All of these clearly military programs "appear to have administrative interconnections" to Iran's declared civilian nuclear research programs, the report stated. This combination suggested a "military-nuclear dimension" to Iran's nuclear ambitions, the report said, undercutting Iran's claim that its nuclear programs would purely civilian in nature.
The report also suggested that Iran "may still be hiding key aspects of its work on advanced P2 centrifuges and help it received on those centrifuges" from the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market network, a diplomat said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won agreement from the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China early on Tuesday morning after a late night dinner party in London to a resolution that would report Iran's violations of its safeguards and NPT commitments to the UN Security Council.
The wording of the final resolution will continue to be debated today and possibly into the weekend, but its broad outlines are well known and are not expected to change, diplomats said.
It will include a reference to "all past IAEA reports and resolutions," including the Sept. 24, 2004, resolution when the IAEA board found Iran in formal noncompliance of its safeguards obligations.
That is "a finding which requires a report to the Security Council under the IAEA statute," Joseph said in Washington.
Iran tried to introduce a counter-resolution to the coalition of Non-Aligned Movement countries on the IAEA board on Thursday to prevent the board action to send its case to the UN Security Council. But the NAM ambassadors – headed by India, South Africa, and Indonesia – rejected it.
"The international community is coalescing around a consensus of growing concern over Iran's nuclear programs," a Vienna-based Western diplomat said.
"Diplomacy remains essential and, despite the frustrations, is working," Joseph said in Washington. "Few today doubt Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. A majority of the IAEA Board are now willing to vote to report Iran to the Security Council. And the Council offers the best next step for diplomacy to succeed."
Editor's note:
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