WarSclerotic

Iran will be able to build nuclear bomb within months, IAEA says – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Western experts say IAEA report to reveal Iran has already acquired knowledge, technology, and resources to achieve nuclear capability.

By Yossi Melman and Reuters

Iran has already acquired the knowledge, technology, and resources to create a nuclear bomb within months, according to Western experts who were briefed on the intelligence information due to be released in the IAEA report this week.

According to the experts, Iranian scientists acquired the knowledge with the help of weapons scientist from Russia, Pakistan and North Korea.

	A nuclear facility under construction inside a mountain located about 20 miles north northeast of Qom, Iran.
	Photo by: AP

Haaretz reported last week that other experts also estimated that Iran could assemble a nuclear bomb within months and carry out an underground nuclear experiment if it wishes to do so. The decision to assemble the weapon is effectively in the hands of Iranian leaders, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the helm.

According to a report in the Washington Post, the intelligence also supports concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related nuclear research after 2003, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Iran halted the research in response to international pressure.

Western powers believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear energy program. Tehran denies wanting atom bombs, saying it is enriching uranium only to power reactors for electricity generation.

The United States, the European Union and their allies have imposed economic sanctions on Tehran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment program. The United States and Israel have repeatedly hinted at the possible use of force against Iranian nuclear sites, eliciting threats of fierce retaliation from the Islamic Republic.

New disclosures in the IAEA report provide details on an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected, The Washington Post said.

The Post quoted David Albright, a former IAEA official who reviewed the agency’s findings, as saying that based on the intelligence the U.N agency has concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core.

Albright described some of the highlights at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week, the newspaper said, adding that it had obtained slides from the presentation and a summary of Albright’s notes.

IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program to be released Monday – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Report will invalidate U.S. intelligence report from 2007 that stated Iran had stopped its work on nuclear weapons development in 2003.

By Yossi Melman

On Monday, or at the latest Wednesday, the director general of the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, will present his latest report on the Iranian nuclear program. The report will be officially presented to the representatives of 35 countries that compose the IAEA’s Board of Governors.

The report is expected to reach the media after it is officially presented, and will determine in the harshest fashion that Iran has conducted a long list of activities, including field tests and computer simulations whose sole meaning is that Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. This report will be much harsher than any of the IAEA’s reports on Iran that have appeared annually since 2003. But it is doubtful that the report will state clearly that Iran already has the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons.

	IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, center, attending an IAEA meeting at the UN in September.
	Photo by: Reuters

The report’s main importance is that it will emphasize that Iran has continued its various activities to produce nuclear weapons since 2004, and therefore the report will also invalidate the U.S. intelligence report from 2007 that stated Iran had stopped its work on nuclear weapons development in 2003.

The report lists a number of Iranian activities to produce the weapons, including tests to determine the strength of a nuclear blast, developing capabilities to produce such weapons and trials, tests and simulations – all in an attempt to reduce the size of nuclear weapons so they could be mounted on a missile warhead. Most of the tests were conducted in a military base in Parchin, about 30 kilometers from Tehran, the report will state. Since this is a military base, IAEA inspectors have no authority to visit or inspect the site.

About a week after the report is presented, the Board of Governors will meet to discuss it. The U.S. and other Western nations will demand that the UN Security Council meet and introduce stricter, more effective and more painful sanctions against Iran in response to the report. But Russia and China, who are trying up to the very last moment to soften the report, object to further sanctions and it is doubtful such a move will pass in the Security Council.

The West wants to expand sanctions, but there is no intention to place sanctions on the Iranian central bank or the Iranian energy industry, which is the main source of revenues for Iran. The U.S. could have already placed unilateral sanctions on the Iranian central bank and put it on the U.S. blacklist, but has not done so out of fears that such a move could spark a crisis in world fuel markets and worsen the global economic crisis.

In response to the reports, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has accused the IAEA of giving in to U.S. pressure to level the accusations, which he said were based on fabricated intelligence. “Iran has already responded to the alleged studies in 117 pages. We’ve said time and again that these are forgeries similar to faked notes,” Salehi told reporters in Tehran.

As to a possible Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, all Western nations oppose such a unilateral move, including the U.S. They have also made this extremely clear to Israeli leaders in recent talks in past months.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has indicated that his country would come to Israel’s aid if it was attacked, but said that if Israel decided to attack first that would be a different matter.

IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability – The Washington Post.

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.

The officials, citing secret intelligence provided over several years to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the records reinforce concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 — when, U.S. intelligence agencies believe, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to release a report this week laying out its findings on Iran’s efforts to obtain sensitive nuclear technology. Fears that Iran could quickly build an atomic bomb if it chooses to has fueled anti-Iran rhetoric and new threats of military strikes. Some U.S. arms-control groups have cautioned against what they fear could be an overreaction to the report, saying there is still time to persuade Iran to change its behavior.

Iranian officials expressed indifference about the report.

“Let them publish and see what happens,” said Iran’s foreign minister and former nuclear top official, Ali Akbar Salehi, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Saturday.

Salehi said that the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is “100 percent political” and that the IAEA is “under pressure from foreign powers.”

‘Never really stopped’

Although the IAEA has chided Iran for years to come clean about a number of apparently weapons-related scientific projects, the new disclosures fill out the contours of an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected. Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming — though at a more measured pace — after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former IAEA official who has reviewed the intelligence files.

“The program never really stopped,” said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The institute performs widely respected independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world, often drawing from IAEA data.

“After 2003, money was made available for research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were hidden within civilian institutions,” Albright said.

U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Iran’s leaders have not decided whether to build nuclear weapons but are intent on gathering all the components and skills so they can quickly assemble a bomb if they choose to. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear activities are peaceful and intended only to generate electricity.

The IAEA has declined to comment on the intelligence it has received from member states, including the United States, pending the release of its report.

But some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal reports. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.

Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.

“The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,” Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.

Key outside assistance

According to Albright, one key breakthrough that has not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as an R265 generator. The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.

Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, Albright said.

According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.

Danilenko’s role was judged to be so critical that IAEA investigators devoted considerable effort to obtaining his cooperation, the two officials said. The scientist acknowledged his role but said he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects, the sources said.

There is no evidence that Russian government officials knew of Danilenko’s activities in Iran. ­E-mails requesting comment from Russian officials in Washington and Moscow were not returned. Efforts to reach Danilenko through his former company were not successful.

Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work — some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say. Additional help appears to have come from the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose design for a device known as a neutron initiator was found in Iran, the sources said. Khan is known to have provided nuclear blueprints to Libya that included a neutron initiator, a device that shoots a stream of atomic particles into a nuclear weapon’s fissile core at the start of the nuclear chain reaction.

One Iranian document provided to the IAEA portrayed Iranian scientists as discussing plans to conduct a four-year study of neutron initiators beginning in 2007, four years after Iran was said to have halted such research.

“It is unknown if it commenced or progressed as planned,” Albright said.

The disclosures come against a backdrop of new threats of military strikes on Iran. Israeli newspapers reported last week that there is high-level government support in Israel for a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

“One of the problems with such open threats of military action is that it furthers the drift towards a military conflict and makes it more difficult to dial down tensions,” said Peter Crail, a nonproliferation analyst with the Arms Control Association, a Washington advocacy group. “It also risks creating an assumption that we can always end Iran’s nuclear program with a few airstrikes if nothing else works. That’s simply not the case.”

Special correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.