[Mb-civic] FW: Connecting the Nuclear Dots - Timmerman

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 17:58:27 -0500
Subject: Fwd: Connecting the Nuclear Dots - Timmerman

> 
>  The Nuclear Dots
>  
> By Kenneth R. Timmerman
>  FrontPageMagazine.com | February 2, 2006
>  
> 
>  
> As the International Atomic Energy Agency board meets today in emergency
> session in Vienna, they finally will begin to connect the dots of Iran’s
> clandestine nuclear weapons program, after years of ignoring or dismissing the
> evidence.
>  
>  Reaching this point has been no mean feat. It has required extraordinary
> diplomatic efforts – from an administration ridiculed by Democrats for its
> “unilateral” approach to world affairs – and strong but quiet leadership from
> the White House.
>  Three individuals and two pieces of information have been key to the
> refreshing burst of realism we are finally beginning to see from the IAEA
> board of governors. (Their action has not been mirrored by IAEA Secretary
> General, Mohammad ElBaradei. More on that below).
>  
>  Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. On Tuesday morning, the State Department
> announced that she had won agreement from the foreign ministers of Russia,
> China, France, Britain and Germany to send Iran’s case from the IAEA to the UN
> Security Council for possible sanctions. Her success was no foregone
> conclusion, and required serious arm twisting at a marathon dinner party
> hosted by British foreign secretary Jack Straw at his London home Monday
> night. Going into that evening, the odds were about even that she would
> succeed. She deserves our praise.
>  The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Working an organization
> where the deck is stacked against America is a thankless task, but Bolton has
> known the right cards to play. Bringing Iran’s case to the UN will “help
> dramatize the extent of world opposition to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and
> demonstrate to them that the course they are pursuing is not acceptable,” he
> said last week. That was Bolton’s Mr. Nice-Guy approach.
>  But behind closed doors, Bolton has made it clear that the Bush
> administration will be watching and judging the performance of the UN Security
> Council very closely. If the Council cannot rally to the cause of punishing a
> regime that has openly called for the destruction of two UN members states
> (Israel and the US), then the UN may not be worth preserving. The notion that
> the United States could pursue “other venues” besides the UN for international
> crisis management and cooperation– such as a Council of Democracies – is no
> longer an idle threat.
>  The US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte. I met with Schulte at his
> office in Vienna just before Thanksgiving. It was just a courtesy call, not an
> interview. But it became immediately clear that Schulte had dedicated his
> every waking moment to convince members of the IAEA board of governors of the
> dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, and is personally responsible for winning
> support from unlikely corners. Schulte has stepped up public diplomacy
> efforts, and has helped raise the profile of Iran’s nuclear cheat and retreat
> with the European media. He proved to be the right man at the right time when
> a post considered by State Department careerists as a cushy career-ending
> backwater was suddenly thrust onto the diplomatic front lines of a major
> international crisis.
>  Two pieces of information helped convince world leaders and nuclear diplomats
> that no credible analyst could continue to harbor doubts as to Iran’s nuclear
> intentions.
>  The walk-in’s laptop. Sometime in mid to late 2004, an Iranian missile
> technician walked into a U.S. embassy to defect. For once, the CIA responded
> in the way the spy movies would have us believe is the norm: they actually
> listened to him, instead of rejecting his “stories” as “fabrications” that
> were “unverifiable.”
>  The reason for the CIA’s sudden shift in attitude was simple. This man came
> carrying a laptop crammed with technical documents from the Shahab-3 missile
> program, the missile the Revolutionary Guards regularly parade about Tehran
> with huge banners announcing it will “wipe Israel off the map.” Today these
> same missiles are being moved around every night in southwestern Iran, well
> within striking range of Israel.
>  On Nov 17, 2004, Colin Powell sprang the news about the defector’s laptop
> while traveling to Chile during his last foreign trip as Secretary of State.
> “I have seen some information that would suggest that [the Iranians] have been
> actively working on delivery systems,” he said. “You don’t have a weapon until
> you put it in something that can deliver a weapon. I’m not talking about
> uranium or fissile material or the warhead; I’m talking about what one does
> with a warhead.”
>  The defector’s information was considered credible because it was limited in
> scope and highly detailed, other officials soon revealed in background
> briefings. The documents on the laptop showed that the Iranians were
> redesigning the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab-3 to carry and detonate a
> nuclear payload.
>  That was smoking gun number one.
>  The Khan documents. The Iranians first revealed the existence of the second
> smoking gun in conversations with the head of the IAEA’s safeguards division,
> Ollie Heinonen, last fall. When questioned about documents they had obtained
> from the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Stop ‘N Shop, they casually revealed that among
> them were technical drawings describing the process of "casting and machining"
> uranium into "hemispherical forms."
>  Why would the Iranians want to master this process? According to Paul
> Leventhal, the founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a group
> that seeks tighter controls on nuclear materials and technologies, “The only
> known application for such technology is for producing the pit, or spherical
> core, of a nuclear weapon.” And Iran first showed interest in learning about
> that process fully nineteen years ago? Hello!
>  Heinonen’s tenacity has paid off. The Iranians finally “located” the document
> in question last week and gave him a copy. In a 4-page draft report on
> Heinonen’s discoveries that was circulated to board members on Tuesday, the
> IAEA said flat-out that the Khan documents "related to the fabrication of
> nuclear weapon components." It was an extraordinary admission.
>  What we know. The IAEA’s own reports reveal a great deal of knowledge of
> Iran’s nuclear programs. They will now be sent to the Security Council as
> resolutions that call for action.
>  A few key points:
>  € Iran developed its relationship to the “father of the Islamic Bomb,” A.Q.
> Khan, in 1987. They purchased drawings related to uranium enrichment and
> bomb-design almost immediately, and soon started importing production
> equipment for these programs through the Khan network. Iran didn’t need a
> relationship with Dr. Khan to develop nuclear power. They only needed him for
> a clandestine weapons program.
>  € In 1989, Iran announced it was preparing to mine and process its own
> uranium from newly-discovered mines in the eastern province of Yazd. This gave
> them an unsafeguarded source of the basic ingredient they needed to feed a
> clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iran has never been forthcoming about how
> much uranium it produced from these mines. That uranium could have been used
> in a clandestine enrichment program. If so, Iran could have weapons today.
>  € In 1992, international suspicions of Iran’s nuclear programs were high.
> Quick to the rescue, IAEA Secretary General Hans Blix traveled to Iran, closed
> his eyes, and gave the regime a clean bill of nuclear health. The
> institutional blindness of the IAEA continued until February 2003, when Blix’s
> successor, Mohammad ElBaradei, finally visited Iran’s previously secret
> uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
>  Blix’s blindness continues to this day. He was in Washington last week,
> trotting out tired delusions that the IAEA should give Iran “more time” to
> demonstrate its good faith, and that was at least ten years away from
> developing a weapon.
>  Less comprehensible than the delusions of an ageing Swedish leftist who hates
> America and is looking for a new job, are recent statements by ElBaradei.
>  ElBaradei, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize last year for slow-rolling
> the showdown with Iran, was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
> on Jan. 27, hobnobbing with movers and shakers. There he announced that the
> United States should offer to supply Iran with nuclear reactors.
>  Now there’s a novel idea. The IAEA amasses a mountain of information that
> shows Iran has systematically violated its nuclear safeguards agreement for
> nineteen years – which clearly demonstrates that Iran cannot be trusted with
> nuclear technology - and the IAEA Secretary General thinks Iran should be
> rewarded with the latest nuclear technology.
>  The IAEA secretary general may be the last man alive in a position of
> responsibility who still fails to connect the nuclear dots in Iran. Pity. His
> own safeguards director, Ollie Heinenon, told IAEA board members on Tuesday
> that the IAEA now believes that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps was carrying
> out work on high explosives and missiles that were directly linked to the
> country’s ostensibly “peaceful” nuclear energy programs.
>  If anyone needs more explicit proof than that of a secret nuclear weapons
> program, they may as well wait until the mushroom clouds go off.
>  
>  
>  
>  http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21143
>  -- 
>  Kenneth R. Timmerman
>  President, Middle East Data Project, Inc.
>  Author: Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
>  Tel: 301-946-2918
>  Reply to: timmerman.road at verizon.net
>  Website: www.KenTimmerman.com <http://www.KenTimmerman.com>
>  
>    



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