Impossible: Iran Has A Fatwa Against Nukes ;) (Daniel 8:3)

Inspectors Say Iran Is Evading Questions as Nuclear Talks Enter a Crucial Stage

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

FEB. 19, 2015

WASHINGTON — With only five weeks remaining for a basic agreement to be reached with Iran on the fate of its nuclear program, the world’s nuclear inspectors reported on Thursday that Iran was still refusing to answer their longstanding questions about suspected work on nuclear weapons and designs.

The report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, was issued just as an American negotiating team heads to Geneva for four days of talks that will, by Sunday, include Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Most of those negotiations focus on the future, particularly on the question of how much nuclear fuel Iran would be permitted to produce and stockpile.

But a lurking issue has been whether, as part of any final accord, Iran will be compelled to answer all questions that the I.A.E.A. has put to it about evidence of past work on designing weapons. For more than three years Iran has refused, maintaining the evidence was fabricated and insisting its nuclear intentions are peaceful. But Iran has also, at various times, agreed to provide some answers, especially after the agency detailed, in November 2011, a dozen areas in which it suspected weapons-related work may have taken place.

American officials have cloaked the details of the negotiations in secrecy, and have not been specific about how an agreement would compel compliance with the international inspectors, who are part of the United Nations. Iranian demands for an agreement include a lifting of all United Nations resolutions and sanctions against Iran, many based on I.A.E.A. reports.

A senior American official, who declined to speak on the record about the negotiations, said the United States and its five negotiating partners — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — “are working to support the work of the I.A.E.A. by gaining I.A.E.A. access to information and locations that it has been seeking as appropriate.”

The agency’s report reaffirmed that Iran had complied with its responsibilities under an interim agreement during the negotiations to suspend production of nuclear fuel that could be quickly converted to bomb-grade, and limit production of reactor-grade fuel. Inspectors have been able to visit the main fuel-production sites. President Obama has cited that finding in recent interviews to assert that the Iranian program is now far more constrained — an argument for playing out the negotiations to conclusion. Even so, opinions in the Obama administration about the prospects for final accord are mixed.

The report said the agency “remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Because Iran has not provided explanations for the agency’s questions about all nuclear-related work, the report said, “the agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

The report, which was not released publicly, was obtained by The New York Times and other news organizations.

American intelligence agencies concluded toward the end of the Bush administration that Iran had ceased what they described as an effort to pursue a weapon in late 2003, though they found evidence of sporadic work since. But there has never been a precise accounting of what kind of work they say Iran pursued, especially in laboratories and test areas overseen by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian scientist believed to be leading the military research.

In 2011, the I.A.E.A. published a list of a dozen technologies, most of them necessary to build a nuclear weapon, that inspectors said Iran had tried to master, based in part on evidence supplied by the United States and Israel.

But on a cooperative note, the inspectors narrowed that list of 12 to three, and announced plans in November 2013 to get those answered first.

More than a year later, the report said, Iran has engaged the inspectors on only one topic — whether its engineers developed detonators that could be used to initiate a nuclear explosion. The report Thursday said Iran had not provided “any explanations” that would go beyond that cursory engagement, or clarify the two outstanding questions.

For example, it said, Iran had avoided answering why it conducted studies of experiments with conventional explosives. In a bomb, those explosives could be used to create highly focused shock waves that compress the core of a nuclear device, starting the chain reaction that leads to a nuclear blast. But there are other uses for such explosives.

The other outstanding question centers on computer modeling studies of how the subatomic neutrons released in a chain reaction move and multiply.

In their 2011 report, the inspectors argued that the evidence behind their dozen questions had made a credible case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” and that a clandestine effort might still be underway.

The report said inspectors had amassed “over a thousand pages” of documents, presumably spirited out of Iran by spies or defectors. It said they showed “research, development and testing activities” on technologies needed to develop a nuclear weapon; the details filled 14 pages.