Tuesday, March 04, 2008

IAEA reveals Iranian organizational chart linking nuclear work with missile research

A blow to the the "peaceful generation of electricity" alibi. "IAEA unveils allegations of Iranian arms work," by Mark Heinrich and Louis Charbonneau for Reuters:. VIENNA/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. investigators want Iran to explain an organizational chart linking projects to process uranium, test explosives and modify a missile cone for a nuclear payload, diplomats briefed on the matter say. [...]

"This presentation was a graphic demonstration that ... amplifies the concerns we've had for a number for years. And we are waiting for answers," Simon Smith, British ambassador to the IAEA, told reporters after the February 25 briefing.

The disclosures came as the United States and key European allies were piling pressure on four developing nations on the U.N. Security Council to vote for sanctions against Iran on Monday for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and has dismissed the intelligence, key bits from a laptop smuggled out of the Islamic Republic and passed to Washington, as baseless, forged or irrelevant. [...]

In the power-point presentation, IAEA safeguards chief Olli Heinonen displayed an organizational diagram linking the three projects with numbered code names -- "5" for processing nuclear fuel, "110" for purported tests of an atomic device and "111" for a longer-range, Shahab-3 missile adapted to carry it.

Project 111 was also known as the "Orchid Office".

One of dozens of slides screened by Heinonen cited a progress report on the related projects for the period July 9, 2003-January 14, 2004. Other files showed the warhead design project began in July 2002. [...]

The summary said Heinonen showed diagrams depicting tests with explosives to be placed in a shaft 400 meters (1,300 feet) underground and detonated from 10 km (6 miles) away.

Electrical bridge-wire (EBW) detonators would be used to ensure the several fissile layers of the warhead blew up in a chain reaction within 130 nanoseconds.

See? There's electricity involved in the project.

"The high-tension firing systems and multiple EBW detonators fired simultaneously are key components of nuclear weapons," the summary quoted Heinonen as saying.

Iran had said its explosives tests were for conventional arms only, he told the diplomats from the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors who will debate Iran at a meeting starting Monday.

Heinonen cited documentation from "Project 111" showing steps, including mathematical simulations, to design a "spherical warhead", suitable for the Shahab-3 missile, that would explode at a height of 600 meters (2,000 feet). [...]

And in anticipation of the usual accusations of fabrications by the Zionist entity and Great Satan:

Heinonen said the IAEA had some of its own information and was not merely relying on Western states, the summary said.

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