The New York Times
claimed an allegedly "secret" IAEA report that
supposedly claims that Iran has the "knowledge" or "information" to build nukes -- nevermind that the IAEA has already debunked (look below the
excerpt from recent IAEA press release) the media claims about such a "secret report" (the job of the NYT, after all, is to participate in the
echo-chamber, and give this sort of propaganda a veneer of journalistic legitimacy, with what little legitimacy the NYT has left after the Iraq war
and
Judith Miller debacle.)
;
Question regarding news reports by the Associated Press (mostly inaudible)
As I have said many times, and I continue to say today, the Agency has no concrete proof there is an ongoing weapons programme in Iran. There are
allegations that Iran has conducted weaponization studies; however, these are issues which we are still looking into. And we are looking to Iran to
help us clarify. We are looking to those suppliers of information to help us on the question of authenticity, because that is really a major issue. It
is not an issue that involves nuclear material; it's a question of allegations, paper work studies, and of course the key issue there is
authenticity. We are seeking clarification from Iran; we are seeking clarification from the supplier of the information. But we don't have any
information that nuclear material has been used. We don't have any information that any components of nuclear weapons have been manufactured.
That is why I continue to say that we are concerned but we are not in any way panicking about the Iranian nuclear programme. However, we need to
continue to work with Iran to clarify these issues. This is an issue that has to do with war and peace, and the Agency has to work on the basis of
fact and facts only.
On the other question that the Agency has information that has been withheld, and that there is information which has (not) been shared with the
Board: this is maybe for the hundredth time that I have been saying and the Agency has been saying that this is totally baseless, totally
groundless.
All information that we have received that has been vetted, assessed in accordance with our standard practices, has been shared with the Board. If
any country has more information that they would like to share with us or with the Board, they are welcom to do that. But we stand by our statement
that all information that has been corroborated, assessed, critically assessed, has been shared with the Board and on the basis of that I make my
statement that we have no concrete evidence that Iran has an ongoing programme. There are concerns by the international community and we are
working on these. But there is a difference between concern and a statement that Iran has an ongoing weapons programme. As to the pressure, I think
our record throughout the years -- including before the Iraq war, when we made it very clear that we had not seen any evidence that Iraq had revived
its nuclear weapons programme, despite a lot of allegations and assumptions -- I think that our record
speaks for itself.
Source:
www.iaea.org...
The "knowledge to build nukes" is in fact pretty accessible and has been for decades:
In fact, in the early 1960s, the Lawrence Livermore Labs (which designs and makes nukes) decided to conduct an experiment called the
Nth Country Experiment to see how easy it would be for "amateurs" to come up with the
design of The Bomb using only open-source material. So they hired a couple of recent physics graduates to do exactly that. They were probably quite
surprised when the students managed to come up with what was apparently an accurate design of a nuclear weapon, using nothing more than
pencils and their public library cards.
And
To top if off, since then both the
US and
UK governments (and presumably others) have inadvertently declassified and released highly
detailed nuclear weapons design information, made freely accessible to anyone who wanted to see them.
It is precisely these sorts of vague and meaningless accusations -- Iran sees the "option" to build nukes, "intends" to have the "capacity" to
do so, or has the "knowledge" to build nukes ... which proves
that there is in fact no real evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program.
[edit on 5-10-2009 by December_Rain]