Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...

U.S. atomic expert doubts report of Iran weapons work
Mon Nov 14, 2005 11:53 PM IST17
By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - A prominent American nuclear security expert on Monday challenged as misleading a report of new U.S. intelligence purportedly suggesting Iran was planning to build a nuclear warhead.

Iran, which hid a uranium enrichment programme from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency for 18 years until 2003, denies Western accusations it is trying to build nuclear arms under cover of an atomic power project, saying it only seeks to make electricity.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that senior U.S. intelligence officials informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in July about the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.

It quoted officials who attended the meeting as saying the laptop contained more than 1,000 pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments indicating a long effort to design a nuclear warhead. IAEA sources told Reuters the evidence presented was not clear-cut.

David Albright, head of the U.S.-based Ins ute for Science and International Security think-tank and a former U.N. arms inspector, said the report was off the mark on one key issue and glossed over two others.

In a statement, Albright said the article repeatedly characterised the laptop's contents as information about a nuclear warhead design "when the information actually describes a re-entry vehicle for a missile.

"This distinction is not minor. The information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead. The 'black box' carried by the re-entry vehicle may appear to be a nuclear warhead, but the do ents do not state what the warhead is."

The 35-nation IAEA board meets on Nov. 24 to decide whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions after failing to convince world powers that its nuclear strivings are wholly peaceful.

MAJOR CHALLENGE

He said the report also did not address the crucial issue of whether the work in the laptop was "initiated by an Iran nuclear missile team on its own" or commissioned by the political leadership as part of a concerted weaponisation drive.

A further important question sidestepped by the report, Albright said, was whether Iran could build the relatively small atomic warhead able to fit into the triconic re-entry vehicle -- a missile nose cone made up of three distinct shapes.

Based on publicly available photos of Iran's 2004 test launch of such a missile, a nuclear warhead would require a diameter of 600 millimetres -- a major challenge for Iran, according to Albright.

He said the diameter of the warhead in a design given to Libya by the disgraced father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was about 900 millimetres.

"A legitimate question is whether Iran could successfully build such a small warhead without outside help," Albright said.

Albright told Reuters he had been briefed by several intelligence and technical experts on the laptop's contents.

Iran dismissed the U.S. allegations in the New York Times article as an attempt to turn IAEA members against it at the nuclear watchdog's crucial board meeting.

"The baseless claim made us laugh. We do not use laptops to keep our classified do ents," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
Reuters

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