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Iran Report: Let’s Be Literal

Iran Report: Let's Be Literal
Differences in interepretation of the IAEA report center on what it says–literally and between the lines–about whether Iran continued with weaponization activities after 2003.

As they say in television, let’s go to the videotape.

The report says in Paragraphs 19 and 20 that in the late 1990s or by the early 2000s, weaponization activities were consolidated in the so-called AMAD Plan, which had Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as executive officer and reported to the Ministery of Defense Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).

Paragraphs 23 and 24 contain this salient language: “owing to growing concerns about the international security situation in Iraq and neighboring countries at that time [2003] work on the AMAD Plan was stopped rather abruptly. . . however, staff remained in place to record and document the achievement of their respective projects . . . [workplaces were cleaned or eliminated] “so that there would be little to identify the sensitive nature of the work”; but information indicates that “some activities previously carried out under the AMAD Plan were resumed later, and that Mr. Fakhizadeh retained the principal organizational role [and] continued to report to MODAFL”; further, information indicates that “in February 2011, Mr. Fakhizadeh moved his seat of operations from MUT to an adjacent location known as the Modjeh Site, and that he now leads the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research.” “The Agency is concerned because some of the activities undertaken after 2003 would be highly relevant to a nuclear weapon program.” [my italics]

 

Author

William Sweet

Bill Sweet has been writing about nuclear arms control and peace politics since interning at the IAEA in Vienna during summer 1974, right after India's test of a "peaceful nuclear device." As an editor and writer for Congressional Quarterly, Physics Today and IEEE Spectrum magazine he wrote about the freeze and European peace movements, space weaponry and Star Wars, Iraq, North Korea and Iran. His work has appeared in magazines like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and The New Republic, as well as in The New York Times, the LA Times, Newsday and the Baltimore Sun. The author of two books--The Nuclear Age: Energy, Proliferation and the Arms Race, and Kicking the Carbon Habit: The Case for Renewable and Nuclear Energy--he recently published "Situating Putin," a group of essays about contemporary Russia, as an e-book. He teaches European history as an adjunct at CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College.