Reuters: According to unnamed sources the U.S. is set to sanction Iran’s petrochemical industry. One source added that the U.S. was “reluctant to try to cut off the Iranian central bank entirely for fear this could drive oil [...]]]>
Reuters: According to unnamed sources the U.S. is set to sanction Iran’s petrochemical industry. One source added that the U.S. was “reluctant to try to cut off the Iranian central bank entirely for fear this could drive oil prices dramatically higher, potentially impairing the U.S. recovery.”
IPS News: Investigative historian Gareth Porter reveals information that seriously disputes the IAEA claim that Vyacheslav Danilenko was involved in building an alleged containment chamber for Iranian nuclear bomb tests. Porter also disputes the veracity of claims made by David Albright and his co-authors in their recent account of Danilenko’s alleged work in Iran which was seen as verifying the information in the IAEA report.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Iranian government insider Seyed Hossein Mousavian who served on Iran’s nuclear negotiating team before being arrested during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term says pressuring Iran over its nuclear program without engaging in real diplomacy may lead to a serious clash. He says there are still ways to resolve concerns:
The Daily Beast: Eli Lake writes that Israel has been developing electronic warfare methods to go along with an attack on Iran such as ways to block off “Iran’s electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officer.” He notes that when the Israeli press is talking about an attack on Iran, an attack is “unlikely to be imminent” and that if Israel was going to attack, it likely wouldn’t consult with the U.S. first:
The Weekly Standard: Lee Smith criticizes the Obama administration for its “failure” to deter Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions and claims the Israelis will stop just short of a “full-scale bombing campaign” to get the “international community” and the U.S. to wage war on Iran for them:
U.S. Department of State: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauded a non-binding U.N. General Assembly resolution drafted by Saudi Arabia that “deplores” the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to U.S. while calling on Iran to investigate the allegations. The resolution was passed by a vote of 106-9, with 40 abstentions. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said it shows that “Iran is increasingly isolated.” Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee said that he would support the resolution if all references to the Islamic Republic were stripped out and “categorically rejected the involvement of any Iranian officials or agencies in the alleged plot.”
New Yorker: Seymour Hersh who has been reporting on “Iran and the bomb” for the past decade cites the experts that I’ve cited here on Lobe Log since the release of the latest IAEA report on Iran and shares the experts’ conclusion that the information presented is not new:
Not only is the information that’s being publicized about Iran’s alleged nuclear activities “not new“, it’s [...]]]>
Not only is the information that’s being publicized about Iran’s alleged nuclear activities “not new“, it’s also based/builds on information that was doubted by experts in the first place.
]]>News reports at the time indicated deep skepticism, when some of the laptop contents were first shown to diplomats accredited to the IAEA. In many quarters, doubt still persists. Recognizing such skepticism, one portion of the IAEA report was devoted to addressing the credibility of the information. But Mr. Kelly, the former IAEA inspector who also served as a department director at the agency, remains unconvinced.
“The first is the issue of forgeries. There is nothing to tell that those documents are real,” says Kelley, whose experience includes inspections from as far afield as Iraq and Libya, to South Africa in 1993.
“My sense when I went through the documents years ago was that there was possibly a lot of stuff in there that was genuine, [though] it was kind of junk,” says Kelly. “And there were a few rather high-quality things” like the green salt document: “That was two or three pages that wasn’t related to anything else in the package, it was on a different topic, and you just wondered, was this salted in there for someone to find?”
It would not be the first time that data was planted. He recalls 1993 and 1994, when the IAEA received “very complex forgeries” on Iraq that slowed down nuclear investigations there by a couple of years.
“Those documents had markings on them, and were designed to resemble Iraqi documents, but when we dug into them they were clearly forgeries,” adds Kelley. “They were designed by a couple of member states in that region, and provided to the Agency maliciously to slow things down.”