Posted on 01/31/2006 1:48:01 PM PST by janetjanet998
VIENNA, Austria - A document obtained by Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday.
The finding was made in a report prepared for presentation to the 35-nation IAEA board when it meets, starting Thursday, on whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.
The report was made available in full to The Associated Press.
First mention of the documents was made late last year in a longer IAEA report. At that time, the agency said only that the papers showed how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms."
The agency refused to make a judgment on what possible uses such casts would have. But diplomats familiar with the probe into Iran's nuclear program said then that the papers apparently were instructions on how to mold highly enriched grade uranium into the core of warheads.
In the brief report obtained Tuesday, however, the agency said bluntly that the 15-page document showing how to cast fissile uranium into metal was "related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components."
Asked about the finding, a senior diplomat close to the IAEA declined to elaborate but emphasized that the documents had no other use.
The report said the document was under agency seal, meaning that IAEA experts were able in theory to re-examine it, but "Iran has declined a request to provide the agency with a copy."
Diplomats familiar with the IAEA investigation of Iran said earlier Tuesday that part of the document recently was given to the agency in an effort to deflect building international momentum to report Iran to the Security Council. But the report did not mention Tehran handing over any papers.
The document was given to Iran by members of the nuclear black market network, the IAEA said. Iran has claimed it did not ask for the document but was given it anyway as part of other black market purchases.
The same network provided Libya with drawings of a crude nuclear bomb which that country handed over to the IAEA as part of its 2003 decision to scrap its atomic weapons program.
Separately, U.S. intelligence — revealed last year, based on information found on a laptop computer reportedly smuggled out of Iran — suggested that Tehran's scientists were working on details of nuclear weapons, including missile trajectories and ideal altitudes for exploding warheads.
The diplomats said the United States recently declassified the information and passed it on to the IAEA, which, in turn, forwarded it to Iran and asked for an explanation. Washington's cooperation with the agency was part of its attempt to prove that Iran was interested in making weapons, said one of the diplomats who is familiar with the IAEA investigation.
The developments were revealed just hours after a surprising agreement by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to advise that Iran be hauled before the powerful body over its disputed nuclear program.
The group agreed that the IAEA "should report to the Security Council its decision on the steps required of Iran, and should also report to the Security Council all IAEA reports and resolutions as adopted relating to this issue."
China and Russia, longtime allies and trading partners of Iran, agreed to a statement that calls on the IAEA to transfer the Iran dossier to the Security Council — the start of a protracted process that could end in sanctions for Tehran.
The IAEA's 35-nation board meets in Vienna on Thursday. Diplomats accredited to the agency said that with opinion leaders Russia and China on board, most — maybe all — of the board nations would likely approve Security Council involvement. Past referral attempts had run into stiff opposition from some influential board members.
"The document was given to Iran by members of the nuclear black market network...."
Sounds like the DNC to me.
Going for the EMP death blow?
I think the US and Iran are both in a race agaisnt time. The US wants Iraq stablized enough to completely focus on Iran BEFORE they build a nuke. Iran wants to build a nuke before Iraq is stabilized. Obviously, their ability to build a nuke HAS to be utterly destroyed before it's successful.
should say "prepares for obliteration"
What, a back issue of The Progressive?
My 7-year-old could come up with fifty documents on how to build an atomic bomb, and by the time he graduates high school he'll have the technical know-how to make an inefficient one.
The trick is making an efficient one.
Straight from the pages of "Duh!" magazine.
OK. Chirac. This is the real deal. Let's hear more big talk about possible nuclear action.
No doubt courtesy of Bill and Hill Clinton, via communist China
Let's announce this as the smoking gun and bomb them tonight. Just for once I would love to save some time and get the surprise on the enemy. Just for once!
Not necessarily. Weapons effects are heavily dependent on weather conditions and altitude of the weapon at detonation. The lower atmosphere has a strong filtering/screening effect, as do trees. Generally, a weapon of military yield achieves the largest possible radius of destructive incendiary effects when detonated about 3000-3500' above ground level. Obviously this isn't true of low-yield weapons, so that sensitivity curves would have to be calculated to obtain an optimum height above ground for detonating a particular weapon.
Eventually this information would be simplified into a series of hardcopy "how-to" nomograms or field applications software for mission profilers and targeters.
This is evidently what the Iranians were doing.
No, actually courtesy of A.Q. Khan, the Paki weaponeer.
Now, whether the Chinese are in the shadows behind him, proliferating to people likely to use these weapons on the United States as a "borrowed knife" strategy, is another question. Only Zhang and Hu know for sure.
WTF??
Shouldn't that read "...to specify action to terminate the program or get blasted"?
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