By
Kenneth R.
Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com |
October 5, 2006
House intelligence
committee chairman Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R, Mi) has sent a scathing
letter to IAEA Secretary General Mohammad ElBaradei, protesting an
IAEA effort to discredit a report issued by Hoekstra’s staff on
U.S. intelligence gaps on Iran.
Wait a minute. Why
would the International Atomic Energy Agency even bother to get
involved when a U.S. congressional committee decides to take a look
at a domestic U.S. issue, to wit, the ability of our $44 billion/year
intelligence community to assess Iran’s intentions and
capabilities in its nuclear development programs?
¬Ý
Rep. Hoekstra called
the IAEA move “particularly calculated to fit an agenda,
possibly including interfering with the domestic political affairs of
the United States.”
¬Ý
He’s right on
that score 1000%. But it gets worse.
¬Ý
Here are the basic
facts of this story.
¬Ý
On Aug. 23, the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence subcommittee on
Intelligence Policy released a staff report entitled “Recognizing
Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United
States.” (A PDF file of the complete report can be
downloaded
here).
¬Ý
Research for the report
was conducted primarily but not exclusively by Republican staff
member Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst detailed to the office
of John Bolton when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
until his (still Senate-unconfirmed) appointment as US Ambassador to
the United Nations last year.
¬Ý
The HPSCI report
concluded that “American intelligence agencies do not know
nearly enough about Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” but
that “based on what is known about Iranian behavior and Iranian
deception efforts, the U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that Iran
is intent on developing a nuclear weapons capability.”
¬Ý
Most informed readers
will look at that and say, so what else is new? When Iranian leaders
such as former president Hashemi-Rafsanjani speak openly of a nuclear
weapons exchange between Iran and Israel, as he has done repeatedly,
who can seriously doubt the nuclear intentions of the Islamic
Republic of Iran?
¬Ý
Answer: the CIA, the
State Department, and the IAEA.
¬Ý
It‘s called:
State of Denial.
¬Ý
Within days of
releasing the report, the CIA Rogue Weasels, led by former CIA
analyst Paul R. Pillar, were
telling Newsweek that
this was Iraq all over again.
¬Ý
“When you have
pressures coming from one place on the political spectrum--which seem
to be pressures to come up with evidence to support a conclusion that
is already there--I take that as a worrisome sign of the same sort of
thing. The bright side here is that the unhappiness of Iraq is still
fresh enough in all of our minds ... we will all be on our guard,”
said Pillar.
¬Ý
Translated into Dem-speak: the HPSCI report was a product of the
Neo-con “cabal,” intended to support yet another “rush
to war.”
¬Ý
In fact, just the
opposite is the case.
¬Ý
The HPSCI report
details what we know about Iran’s declared nuclear programs, as
established by Iran’s declarations to the IAEA. It urges the
intelligence community to spend greater resources to ensure it gets
it right this time.
¬Ý
It also points to
troubling indicators of a parallel, clandestine nuclear weapons
program in Iran, including:
¬Ý
* Two covert uranium
enrichment programs, discovered belatedly by the IAEA.
¬Ý
* Iran’s
extensive relationship to nuclear black market impresario Dr. A.Q.
Khan, who provided uranium enrichment technology, equipment, and
blueprints for the bomb to Iran.
¬Ý
* Documentation
discovered in Iran by the IAEA of A.Q. Khan documents for “casting
and machining enriched uranium hemispheres, which are directly
related to the production of nuclear weapons components.”
¬Ý
The report notes that the IAEA discovered in September 2003 that Iran
had “covertly produced” a short-lived radioisotope,
polonium 210, which has only two known uses: satellite batteries, and
nuclear weapons initiators.
¬Ý
This is just the
beginning of the case any Iran expert who watches these things
closely will make on why
Iran’s nuclear program constitutes a breach of Iran’s NPT
obligations and a clear
threat to the region, the world, and to the non-proliferation
regime.
¬Ý
The IAEA doesn’t
like to accuse states such as Iran of violating their NPT
obligations. And yet, the IAEA Board of Governors has done just that,
as noted by Rep. Hoekstra’s report:
¬Ý
“Since 2002, the
IAEA has issued a series of reports detailing how Iran has covertly
engaged in dozens of nuclear-related activities that violate its
treaty obligations to openly cooperate with the IAEA. These
activities included false statements to IAEA inspectors, carrying out
certain nuclear activities and experiments without notifying the
IAEA, and numerous steps to deceive and mislead the IAEA.”
¬Ý
That brings us to the
core of the issue.
¬Ý
On Sept 12, an IAEA
underling, Vilmos Cserveny, penned a scurrilous letter to Hoekstra,
taking “strong exception” to the HPSCI report on U.S.
intelligence deficits on Iran.
¬Ý
Mr Cserveny claimed the
report made an “outrageous and dishonest suggestion:”
regarding that the removal of IAEA chief inspector on Iran,
Christophe Charlier.
¬Ý
Here’s what the
HPSCI report said:
¬Ý
“While not an
instance of Iranian perfidy, the spring 2006 decision by IAEA
Director General ElBaradei to remove Mr. Christopher Charlier, the
chief IAEA Iran inspector, for allegedly raising concerns about
Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program and concluding that
the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct weapons, should
give U.S. policymakers great pause.”
¬Ý
Those are measured
words that recall an earlier admonition to the IAEA by a U.S. Senate
committee for firing an IAEA inspector of Iraqi nuclear sites in
1981, who had warned of weapons-related activity shortly before
Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s French-built nuclear bomb
plant at Thuwaitha in June 1981.
¬Ý
Note: The IAEA letter
blasting the HPSCI report does not dispute the fact that the Agency
fired Mr. Charlier as chief inspector in Iran. Instead, it tries to
mislead the U.S. media (the IAEA’s real audience) by calling
the HPSCI account “outrageous” and a “dishonest
suggestion” that the “removal [of Mr. Charlier]
might have been¬Ý for ‘not having adhered to an
unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole
truth about the Iranian nuclear program.’”
¬Ý
Here is the precise
language of the HPSCI report:
¬Ý
“If Mr. Charlier
was removed for not adhering to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA
officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear
program, the United States and the international community have a
serious problem on their hands.”
¬Ý
In his reply to these
scurrilous accusations by the IAEA, which constitute an intrusion
into U.S. domestic political affairs, Rep. Hoekstra noted that that
the United States had “complained formally” about the
decision to reassign Mr. Charlier as chief Iran weapons
inspector.
¬Ý
“I believe it is
fair to characterize that this IAEA action was undertaken quietly,
and that there was an effort not to inform IAEA members,” Rep.
Hoekstra wrote. “Further, I understand that you have omitted
mentioning the Charlier reassignment in your reports to the IAEA
Board of Governors. The Cserveny letter is apparently the first time
the IAEA has publicly admitted that it reassigned Charlier at the
request of Iran.”
¬Ý
Such blatant
misrepresentation of facts comes from the IAEA, an agency the United
States government depends for on-site inspections of Iran’s
declared nuclear facilities.
¬Ý
If the IAEA can’t
get it right, don’t expect the U.S. intelligence community to
do better.
¬Ý
Is it any wonder that
IAEA director Mohammad ElBardeli would send an underling to do the
big boy’s bidding in such a scurrilous fight?
Original
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