Has Evidence of Iran’s Nuclear Advances Been Withheld?

There are two embarrassing pieces of evidence buried in all the reporting about the IAEA quarterly report on the Iranian program, due to be released later this week. One is the fact that much of Iran’s military program continued after 2003 –not what the key findings of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program seemed to suggest. Whatever the merits of the entire document – still classified – the key judgments published in early December 2007 not only undermined the case for military action against Iran, it also did considerable damage to the case for sanctions – no significant sanctions were approved between March 2008 and June 2010.

As the report is released in the next few days, we will learn that much of the military clandestine program actually never stopped.

The second embarrassment is that much of the evidence now mentioned in the report appears to be old – member states and the Agency knew about these apparently incriminating activities for a long time now.

How come the Agency sat on this information for so long?

Iran is already trying to claim that the report is “political.”

Russia and China, in an unprecedented step, have sought to limit the extent of its revelations, pretty much under the same pretext.

But the IAEA is not a political body – it is a UN technical agency, whose mandate is to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. To have that information and not reveal it smacks of politics.

This is not an embarrassment for the current Director General of the IAEA, Ambassador Yukiya Amano. Since he took over the Agency, the quality and
clarity of its reports on Iran has dramatically improved. But his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei​, now a candidate for Egypt’s presidency, and in his time a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IAEA, might have much to answer.

If indeed the evidence was withheld for so long, one must ask the motives for ElBaradei’s decision to use his role, influence and prestige, in order to shield Iran’s nuclear advances.

America’s clumsy release of the NIE key judgments may have been irresponsible – as it was surely wrong.

The withholding of intelligence that could potentially provide conclusive incriminating evidence against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, if it happened, would not just be irresponsible. It would be criminal.