{"id":4037,"date":"2011-11-29T21:36:49","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T04:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4037"},"modified":"2011-11-29T21:36:49","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T04:36:49","slug":"iran-and-the-i-a-e-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4037","title":{"rendered":"Iran and the I.A.E.A."},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran and the I.A.E.A.<\/strong>
\nby Seymour M. Hersh – November 18, 2011 – The New Yorker<\/p>\n

The first question in last Saturday night\u2019s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the \u201cpossible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,\u201d struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost. One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided \u201cadditional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon\u201d and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would co\u00f6rdinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran\u2019s nuclear program Obama\u2019s \u201cgreatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint\u201d and added, \u201cLook, one thing you can know \u2026 and that is if we re\u00eblect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.\u201d The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical\u2014a \u201csmoking calutron,\u201d as a knowledgeable official once told me\u2014to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.<\/p>\n

The Times reported, in its lead story the day after the report came out, that I.A.E.A. investigators \u201chave amassed a trove of new evidence that, they say, makes a \u2018credible\u2019 case\u201d that Iran may be carrying out nuclear-weapons activities. The newspaper quoted a Western diplomat as declaring that \u201cthe level of detail is unbelievable\u2026. The report describes virtually all the steps to make a nuclear warhead and the progress Iran has achieved in each of those steps. It reads likes a menu.\u201d The Times set the tone for much of the coverage. (A second Times story that day on the I.A.E.A. report noted, more cautiously, that \u201cit is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But how definitive, or transformative, were the findings? The I.A.E.A. said it had continued in recent years \u201cto receive, collect and evaluate information relevant to possible military dimensions of Iran\u2019s nuclear program\u201d and, as a result, it has been able \u201cto refine its analysis.\u201d The net effect has been to create \u201cmore concern.\u201d But Robert Kelley, a retired I.A.E.A. director and nuclear engineer who previously spent more than thirty years with the Department of Energy\u2019s nuclear-weapons program, told me that he could find very little new information in the I.A.E.A. report. He noted that hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established. Those materials, and others, \u201cwere old news,\u201d Kelley said, and known to many journalists. \u201cI wonder why this same stuff is now considered \u2018new information\u2019 by the same reporters.\u201d
\n…more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Iran and the I.A.E.A. by Seymour M. Hersh – November 18, 2011 – The New Yorker The first question in last Saturday night\u2019s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the \u201cpossible existence of undeclared nuclear more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2114],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}