WarSclerotic

WikiLeaks Archive – Murkier View on Iran’s Missiles – NYTimes.com.

By MARK MAZZETTI and WILLIAM J. BROAD

But a review of a dozen other State Department cables made available by WikiLeaks and interviews with American government officials offer a murkier picture of Iran’s missile capabilities. Despite the tone of the February cable, it shows there are disagreements among officials about the missiles, and scant evidence that they are close to being deployed.

The conflicting portraits illustrate how the batch of diplomatic documents made available by WikiLeaks can be glimpses of the American government’s views, sometimes reflecting only part of the story, rather than concrete assertions of fact.

While there are a range of opinions about the details of the weapons sale and the readiness of the missiles, what most American officials appear to agree on is that at the very least North Korea sold a number of ballistic missile parts to Tehran in 2005.

The sale set off alarms in Washington, because the parts were for BM-25 missiles, a weapon with powerful engines that — if deployed by Iran — could bolster Tehran’s ability to strike far beyond the Middle East, State Department cables show.

But five years later, American officials in interviews said that they had no evidence that Iran had used the parts or technology to actually construct a BM-25, let alone begin the years of flight testing necessary before it could reliably add the missile to its arsenal.

It is unclear why Iran appears to have had trouble with the BM-25. According to one American official, it is possible that Iran did not get complete “missile kits” from the North Koreans in 2005, or that Iranian scientists have had difficulty mastering the technology.

Both American officials and outside experts appear to agree, however, that Iran did use some of the BM-25 technology to launch a satellite into space last year, and that Iranian scientists probably used data from that launching for its military program.

“Just because the BM-25 program hasn’t progressed as far as the Iranians hoped it would, the concern remains,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because assessments about Iran’s missile program are classified.

The dozen cables provide a glimpse of secret discussions between the United States and a number of foreign governments about the BM-25, described earlier this week in an article in The New York Times. Their views are colored by their relationships with Iran.

The Israelis, for instance, take a more alarmist stance than the United States because Israel regards Iran as its greatest threat. Russia, on the other hand, denies that the BM-25 even exists.

In the cables, American officials argue that North Korea developed the medium-range weapon based on a Russian design, the R-27, once used on Soviet submarines to carry nuclear warheads.

The cables describe how the North Koreans, in turn, transferred “missiles” or “missile systems” to Iran. The cables do not refer to missile parts or “kits.”

But the cables, written over four years, vary in the certainty with which Americans make the claim about the technology transfer, with one cable saying Iran “has probably acquired” BM-25s and another discussing “substantial data indicating Iranian possession of a missile system.”

The public release of the cables has stirred debate among experts outside the government on the existence of the BM-25 and whether, if Iran has the weapon, it poses an immediate threat to Western Europe.

Many experts say the BM-25 has undergone no flight testing either by North Korea or Iran, and they note that traditionally it takes a dozen or so tests over several years to perfect a missile and prepare it for military deployment.

On the other hand, NATO last month agreed to establish an antimissile shield and has invited Russia to take part, suggesting growing concern in Europe of an Iranian missile threat.

One of the most knowledgeable public analysts of Tehran’s endeavors in rocketry is Michael Elleman, a missile engineer who contributed to a report on Iran’s program issued in May by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London.

That report was skeptical of Iran’s having obtained the BM-25 from North Korea. Now, Mr. Elleman said, he is less certain.

“It is possible that the BM-25 does not exist,” he said in an e-mail message. “However, it is more likely that it does, in some fashion. We just do not know, precisely, because it has never been tested.”

The first cable in the WikiLeaks cache that refers to the BM-25 came from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, sent to Washington on May 5, 2006. The cable discusses a meeting a month earlier between Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, and Meir Dagan, director of Mossad, Israel’s main spy agency.

According to the cable, Mr. Dagan talked of Iran’s having a medium-range missile, the Shahab-3, that “can currently carry nuclear material, and reported that Iran is also trying to adapt the BM-25 missile, which already has a longer range, for this purpose.”

American intelligence officials do not believe that Iran has yet mastered the technology to put a nuclear warhead on top of a missile.

But the most detailed discussion about the missile is contained in a cable from Feb. 24 of this year, which describes the disagreements between American and Russian officials about the missile.

The cable shows that American officials firmly believed that Iran had obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, and that there was direct evidence of the weapons transfer. But it goes on to indicate that the Russians dismiss that claim as a myth driven by politics.

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized

This entry was posted on December 3, 2010 at 6:45 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.