Is Russian helping Iran with nuclear bomb?

NY Times:

International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials. As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way, said that the document appeared authentic, without explaining why, but they made it clear that they did not think the scientist was working on behalf of the Russian government.

Still, it is the first time that the nuclear agency has suggested that Iran may have received help from a foreign weapons scientist in developing nuclear arms.

The American and European officials said the new document, written in Farsi, was part of an accumulation of evidence that Iran had worked toward developing a nuclear weapon, despite Iran’s claims that its atomic work over the past two decades has been aimed solely at producing electrical power.

In February, in a closed-door briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, its chief nuclear inspector presented diplomats from dozens of countries with newly declassified evidence — documents, sketches and even a video — that he said raised questions about whether Iran had tried to design a weapon.

Among the data presented by Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector, were indications that the Iranians had worked on exploding detonators that are critical for the firing of most nuclear weapons.

When the Iranian envoy at the briefing called the charges “groundless” and protested that the tests were for conventional arms, Mr. Heinonen replied that the experiments were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon,” two participants said. He called the shape and timing involved in the firing systems and detonators “key components of nuclear weapons.”

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According to experts, the most difficult challenges in developing nuclear weapons are creating the bomb fuel and figuring out how to compress and detonate it.

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In the late 1990s, Russia’s scientific and technical elite, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, forged ties to Iran, which paid hard currency for aid in weapons and technical programs. Western experts say the help extended to Tehran’s atomic efforts, but there was never any proof in those years of a Russian link to nuclear weapons development.

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The article seems to suggest that the Russian help was probably from rogue scientist. This would be similar to the help they got from Pakistan's Khan network in the past. It does seem clear that the only reason to be studying the process is to develop a bomb. That suggest the Iranians are continuing to lie about their nuke program.