Leaked IAEA report says Iran working on nukes

Julian Borger:

The urgency of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat was underscored today when a leaked report revealed that the UN inspection agency believes the Islamic republic has "sufficient information" to make a nuclear weapon and has "probably tested" a key component.

A day after Barack Obama scrapped plans to deploy missile defence technology in eastern Europe, the Associated Press said it had obtained material from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which suggests that it was more convinced Iran had been trying to make a bomb than its outgoing director, Mohamed ElBaradei, had admitted.

"The agency … assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device based on HEU [highly enriched uranium] as the fission fuel," AP quoted a "secret annexe" to a report on Iran as saying. Western diplomats confirmed that the annexe was authentic.

"Its absolutely accurate," one official said. "It shows the agency's thinking, which is that Iran is a lot further along on this than most people think. It suggests the Iranians have done a lot of work."

The annexe said Iranian scientists had engaged in "probable testing" of explosives arranged in a hemisphere, which is how an implosion-type nuclear warhead is triggered.

There was also evidence, the report says, that Iran had worked on developing a chamber to carry a warhead on top of one of its missiles "that is quite likely to be nuclear".

...

Why would the IAEA keep this information secret. Isn't its job to make inspections and reveal the results? Does it fear that there will be consequences if some find out about the bomb building? Or does it jsut want to keep the evidence ambiguous to thwart Israeli defensive efforts.

It is not like US and Israeli intelligence have not already figured this out too. Iran is not likely to act responsibly when it meets with US and UN officials. It has been preparing itself for more sanctions and possible attack. We may be only weeks away from a showdown.

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