repost: #msg-10000694 IAEA Puppet of US?/Iranian President Raps Nuclear Watchdog
Two texts:
Iranian President Raps Nuclear Watchdog
Friday, March 03, 2006
Yahoo News: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rapped the UN's nuclear watchdog, calling its decisions politically motivated and made under the influence of world powers. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is meeting on Monday to make an assessment of Iran's nuclear programme that will be sent to the UN Security Council, which could then take punitive action.
Ahmadinejad's visit to Malaysia, which ends Friday, is part of a campaign to avert sanctions and promote Iran's stance that it has a right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The outspoken president said in a speech that one of the major challenges facing the Muslim world was "the increasing loss of credibility by international organisations".
"Regrettably most international organisations have turned into political organisations and the influence of great powers prevents them from taking fair and legally sound decisions," he said.
"IAEA's treatment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the board of governors of the IAEA for that matter, their approach towards the Islamic Republic of Iran is a purely politically motivated action."
However, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who is on a worldwide tour to explain Tehran's position, said there was still room for compromise to resolve the stand-off.
Iran has requested last-ditch talks with Britain, France and Germany later Friday aimed at easing Western fears that the Islamic republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
"We are planning our positions, also our readiness, to reach, to compromise, based on all parties' benefits," Mottaki said of the negotiations to be held in Vienna.
"It means achieving the essential rights of Iran, which is realising the right of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and from the other side, removing any concerns, if there (are any)," he told reporters.
"Any plan which takes us in that compromise, any proposal. From the very beginning we were saying that we were ready for compromise, but it must have the two elements as I explained."
Ahmadinejad said that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognised the right of member states to have access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes but that "certain powers" believed this right could be withdrawn.
He warned that such discrimination would galvanise Muslims worldwide to rise up against Western hegemony, and that if anyone imposed their will on his nation "the Iranian nation will make them sorry".
"Domination and bullying will not last much longer. Bullies and Zionists beware -- you are going to fall," he said. "This awakening is on the increase and its signs can be seen all around the world." READ MORE
"If some parties want to, outside the regulations, impose something on my nation, experience tells me and them that the Iranian nation will make them sorry," he said in a question-and-answer session later.
As Ahmadinejad's visit drew to a close, he was given a red-carpet welcome to the Federal Mosque in Kuala Lumpur for Friday prayers.
Hundreds of bystanders gathered there for a glance of the president, who spent some time with them, hugging and kissing several children who were ushered through the crowd by security officials.
The trio of European states that negotiate for the EU on Iran has warned Tehran in writing that progress Friday is totally dependent on Iran stopping uranium enrichment and cooperating with UN nuclear inspections.
The United States has given only half-hearted support to the latest diplomatic initiative, which follows talks in Moscow on a Russian compromise proposal that failed to make any breakthrough.
Excerpt: Speaking of control, a pertinent question at this point is whether the IAEA is turning into a puppet of the US.
The IAEA's quandary Given a European resolution calling on the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions, it merits our attention to examine the latest reports in the US media about the IAEA's new revelations suggesting an Iranian nuclear-weapons program.
According to a news article in the New York Times on Wednesday, the IAEA has "for the first time provided evidence directly suggesting that at least some of Iran's activities point to a military project". The timing of this finding couldn't have been more ideal as far as the anti-Iran forces within the IAEA are concerned. The article goes on to say that the IAEA, with "partial help" by US intelligence, has uncovered a "secretive Iranian entity called the Green Salt Project which worked on uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design".
According to the IAEA report, the project "could have a military nuclear dimension and appears to have administrative interconnections". Furthermore, it cites a 15-page report given to Iran in the mid-1980s related to "fabrication of nuclear weapon components". That report has been put under the agency's seal.
What is curious about the newspaper report is that it is deliberately sketchy about the sources and nature of US intelligence given to the IAEA, confining itself to a passing statement that it stems from a "laptop seized in Iran".
Well, the laptop story again. Not long ago, it was the subject of a lengthy Sunday New York Times investigative piece written principally by David Sanger, who is also named as one of the several authors of Wednesday's article on the IAEA's discovery of a smoking gun of sorts. In that story, a perfect fit for a James Bond movie, the laptop is said to have belonged to "someone in Iran who is now dead and had given it to someone else" who had somehow smuggled it out of the country.
Several months ago, IAEA officials in Vienna were given a state-of-the-art presentation by US intelligence officers on the vast information on Iran's nuclear program contained in the laptop, including the purported design for nuclear warheads.
Not long after, the New York Times website featured a serious rebuttal by the respected David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, citing "serious and deep flaws" in the New York Times piece on the laptop. According to Albright, "William J Broad and David E Sanger repeatedly characterize the contents of computer files as containing information about a nuclear warhead design when the information actually describes a reentry vehicle for a missile. This distinction is not minor, and Broad should understand the difference."
Yet Sanger, a colleague of Judith Miller, who propagated false and misleading information about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, failed to open even a small parenthesis in his piece about the healthy skepticism of Albright and others about the laptop.
Nor did Sanger or his respected co-authors mention that the four-page IAEA report, released on Tuesday, gives a rather glowing impression of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA. For example, on page 1 we read: "Iran has continued to facilitate access under its safeguard agreement as requested by the agency, and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in force, including by providing in a timely manner the requisite declarations and access to locations." It cites environmental sampling at Parchin and elsewhere, with the results "still pending".
Interestingly, the report, written by Olli Heinonen, the deputy chief of the IAEA who has just returned from Iran, begins by setting the benchmark that it contains "factual information" only and that it "does not include any assessments thereof". Unless we are all assumed non-English-speaking or with English as our second language at best, this raises serious question about the report's inconclusive assessments of the Green Salt Project, ie, it "could have a military nuclear dimension", or "it appears to have administrative interconnections". This is not factual information, but rather assessments or conclusions arrived at through deductive reasoning.
The trouble with such inferences is that, whether they are legitimate or deliberately overdrawn, they can be misconstrued, coming as they do at a critical time coinciding with Bush's State of the Union address and the big US-EU push at the IAEA. This is because of the murky nature of nearly all dual purpose technology - after all, the so-called "green salt" is the name for a catalytic ingredient in the conversion of uranium ore into uranium hexafluoride, which in turn is enriched into nuclear fuel - or a bomb.
What is called for at this stage is a candid statement by IAEA experts on the reliability and relevance of the intelligence fed by the US, instead of pursuing a blind-faith approach to such politically motivated information. That means the need for a second report by IAEA secretary general Mohammad ElBaradei by March 6, the due date for his report to the IAEA on Iran's dossier. This second report should address the quality of the extra-IAEA data on which Heinonen has seemingly relied uncritically.
On Iran's part, on the other hand, the problem, in addition to the need to provide greater transparency and thus to put to rest the lingering marginal questions about its program, is one of regaining the sympathy of the world community after making incendiary anti-Israel statements. Unfortunately, the Iranian problem is more severe than that and, by all indications, a fresh rethinking of Iran's nuclear moves and counter-moves is seriously under way in Iran right now.
Khudair Al Taher, a regular columnist for Elaph, a web-based pan-Arab newspaper, wrote in its March 10 edition that: “All the signs indicate Iran’s determination to trigger a civil war in Iraq, with the help of its ally, Syria, Al Zarqawi followers and the remainders of the Baath and communist organizations.
“In the last few days, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, have started to infiltrate Iraq to supervise, militarily, the organization of the militias’ movements during the war. In parallel to that, the Syrian intelligence on the Sunni side, has started to coordinate the efforts of the remainders of the Baath and the Al Zarqawi group, to prepare for the awaited zero hour.
“The criminal plan that is [to be] implemented by the diabolic Syrian-Iranian coalition, will use the dominance of the Iranian intelligence over all the Shiite shrines, to conduct an attack on the Imam Hussein Shrine in Karbala, since it is considered the religious symbol that is most capable of arousing the popular confessional feelings. This attack, will coincide with planned attacks performed by the Shiite militias on the Sunni homes and mosques, under the direct supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
“These attacks will undoubtedly be met with counter-actions by the Sunnis, with a push from the Syrian intelligence… then the flames of the civil war will be ignited, and Iraq will be burned. The success of the plan to trigger a civil war, will rely on the Sunni and Shiite idiots, riffraff, ragtag betrayers, that will be led into this catastrophe… and be sold, when the opportunity arises, in the political compromises and deals market.
“We will not weep a people that surrender their rights, don’t defend their sovereignty and dignity, and allow the Syrian-Iranian intelligence to interfere in Iraqi affairs and perpetrate explosions, murders and mass damage… We will not weep a people that harbors administrative corruption, kidnappings and slaughters, and the majority of which [who have] no sense of national belonging and responsibility, a people that applauds opportunist and thieving politicians, elects them and doesn’t rage against them and crush their heads in the streets…so let them go to hell.” - Elaph, United Kingdom
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