The International Atomic Energy Agency has once again lent itself to the political interests of the United States and Israel, provoking a needless conflict with Iran
by Gareth Porter
Part 3 - The IAEA caves to Israel and the US
The documents and photos the Israelis pushed with US support eventually prompted the IAEA to cave in to their demands. The agency sent three letters to Iran on July 5, August 9, and August 21, 2019, based entirely on the Israeli claims about three “undeclared sites.”
In the missives, the IAEA claimed to have “detailed information” about what it called “possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities” at each of site. It demanded “clarifications” in each case.
According to the IAEA, the first letter related to the “possible presence” between 2002 and 2003 of a natural uranium metal disc which it said “may not have been included in Iran’s declarations.” The letter was clearly referring to Lavisan-Shian in Tehran, when it said the site “underwent extensive sanitation and leveling in 2003 and 2004.” At the time, the agency decided there was no point in visiting it.
The United States and Israel have always argued that Iran had completely removed the topsoil at the site in order to avoid detection by environmental sampling of some kind of nuclear-related work at the site. But that claim was false. In fact, the buildings belonging to the military contractor of Lavisan-Shian had been torn down, but topsoil remained.
The IAEA did undertake environmental sampling of the site in June 2004, acknowledging that the vegetation and soil samples collected at Lavisan-Shian revealed no evidence of nuclear material. Reuters reported at the time that an IAEA official had said that “on-site inspections of Lavizan produced no proof that any soil had been removed at all.”
In its July 5 letter, the IAEA demanded to know whether an undeclared natural uranium metal disc had been present at the site and, if so, where it was located. That question was clearly based on a slide in the Israeli collection that Albright’s organization has described as summarizing how to make uranium deuteride, which has been used to create a neutral initiator for a nuclear explosion, with uranium metal chips and deuterium gas.
The second site, which has not been otherwise identified, “may have been used for the processing and conversion of uranium ore including fluorination in 2003,” according to the IAEA letter. It said the site “underwent significant changes in 2004, including the demolition of most buildings,” as though that constituted evidence of wrongdoing.
The claim made little sense given that, in April 2003, Iran had formally declared to the IAEA that it was opening lines at its Esfahan nuclear technology center for production of natural uranium metal for use in the production of shielding material.
At the third site, the IAEA stated, “outdoor conventional explosive testing may have taken place in 2003” on “shielding” for use with “neutron detectors.” As part of the rationale for demanding clarification, the agency cited supposed efforts beginning in July 2019 to “sanitize part of the location.” This language was designed to imply that evidence of wrongdoing had been removed from the Iranian site.
We know that the site in question was near Abadeh, because Netanyahu showed satellite photos of the Abadeh site in June 2019 and again in late July of this year, when a set of buildings had been removed by the latter date. Netanyahu bragged that he was revealing “yet another secret nuclear site…exposed in the archives.”
However, IAEA wording suggested its letter was prompted not by any concrete evidence of nuclear activity at the Abadeh site, but by some evidence of the destruction of those buildings.
The IAEA thus chose the three sites based on nothing more than the fact that buildings were razed, and thanks to pressure applied by the Israelis and the United States. The notion that Iran “may have” used and stored undeclared nuclear material at undeclared site, moreover, was based solely on unvetted Israeli documents, contrary to the IAEA claim of “extensive and rigorous corroboration process.”
In provoking a needless crisis over obscure hypotheticals, the IAEA has once again lent itself to the political interests of Washington and Tel Aviv – just as it did during the Bush and Obama administrations. But this time the IAEA’s highly politicized campaign is serving the Israeli aim of making it politically impossible for the next administration to return to the Iran nuclear deal.
On June 8, Iran’s permanent mission the IAEA demanded that any request for clarification under the additional protocol should be based on “authenticated information” and expressed “concern” over attempts to “reopen outstanding issues” that had been closed in 2015.
Iran views the new IAEA exercise as yet another salient of the US-Israeli “maximum pressure” strategy. Tehran has thus insisted that the IAEA cease its role as a de facto prosecutor for the US-Israeli special relationship.
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