Hoekstra-Harman's Congressional Report on IRAN : "Outrageous, Dishonest, Erroneous, Misleading and Unsubstantiated."
Authors of the Congressional Committee Report on Iran: Related Articles: "While not an instance of Iranian perfidy, the Spring 2006 decision by If Mr. Charlier was removed for not adhering to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program, the United States and the international community have a serious problem on their hands." "First, the NPT allows uranium conversion and other processes central to enrichment. Secondly, the Esfahan facility is under IAEA safeguards... nearly a month after Iran resumed uranium conversion there, the Director-General of the Agency, Mohammad El-Baradei, certified that all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for and, therefore, such material is not diverted to prohibited activities. In other words, if the voluntary suspension was not a legal obligation, the ending of that suspension can hardly be made the grounds for legal action by either the IAEA or the UN." Dafna Linzer wrote in Washington Post: "Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said: They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy." In 1975, Kissinger, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld approved National Security Decision Memorandum 292 "US-Iran Nuclear Cooperation," which approves the transfer of full-cycle nuclear technology. The deal was worth US$6 billion.
Peter Hoekstra. A Dutch-born REPUBLICAN Congressman
(Born in Groningen in the Netherlands, Hoekstra emigrated to Holland, Michigan at the age of three with his family. Hoekstra's district has the largest concentration of Dutch-Americans in the country. Hoekstra attended Hope College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975 and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 1977.Prior to his election to Congress, he worked for 15 years at Zeeland, Mich.-based office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller Inc., where he held the title of Vice President of Marketing.)
Jane Harman, Jewish-American DEMOCRAT Congresswoman
Read here Profile of Jane Harman,
Read here full article by Ludwig De Braeckeleer in Ohmy News
Iran, the latest target of the regime-changers, is in America's sights, and we aren't going to let such a paltry consideration as the facts get in our way.
Peter Hoekstra and Jane Harman have NO interest in reality: their "report" is war propaganda, pure and simple. That's why they shrieked that Iran is "covertly" producing polonium-210, a substance with "two known uses," one of which is to produce nukes (the other is to make satellite batteries).
.... Jane Harman and her Democratic colleagues have no dispute with the Republicans – and the far-right neocons epitomized by Perle – when it comes to Iran.
Both are determined to protect Israeli interests, at the expense of American interests, by threatening to go to war if Iran continues to pursue its apparent goal of joining the nuclear club, along with its neighbors, Israel and Pakistan.
Everybody knows that what John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt call "the Lobby" is behind the current campaign to gin up another Middle Eastern war, this time with Iran. Israel's recent incursion into Lebanon was but a dress rehearsal for the main event – which is coming no matter how badly the Lebanese adventure turns out.
It is coming because there is simply no opposition to the Lobby's ironclad control of the U.S. Congress. The defense of Israel overrides and effectively neutralizes all other considerations. It doesn't matter that a confrontation with Iran will create yet more terrorists determined to strike at America, it is deemed an act of "appeasement" to point out that, if we contained the nuclear-armed Soviets for half a century, we could easily deter the Iranians from attacking our Middle Eastern allies – and it is considered beyond the pale to note that the advocates of war with Iran are serving the interests of a foreign power, namely Israel, over and above what is clearly in American interests.
.... Read here for more
An official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called an intelligence report put out by a U.S. congressional committee "outrageous and dishonest," filled with "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements."
Vilmos Cserveny, IAEA director for External Relations and Policy Coordination, made his comments in a letter to U.S. House Representative Peter Hoekstra, who chaired the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which on Aug. 23 issued the 29-page document assessing Iran nuclear activities: " "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States."
Personal attack on ElBaradei
The House report accuses Dr. ElBaradei, director of the IAEA and a Nobel Peace Laureate, of preventing the U.N. inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's nuclear program.
The Report on page 13 said:
Mr. Charlier, 61, was the head of the inspection team until April, when Iran requested the IAEA to remove him from the team.
IAEA Director General ElBaradei to remove Mr. Christopher Charlier, the chief
IAEA Iran inspector, for allegedly raising concerns about Iranian deception
regarding its nuclear program and concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear
program is to construct weapons, should give U.S. policymakers great
pause.
The United States has entrusted the IAEA with providing a truly objective
assessment of Iran's nuclear program. IAEA officials should not hesitate to
conclude that the purpose of Iranian nuclear program is to produce weapons if
that is where the evidence leads.
The story was first reported on July 8 by Bruno Schirra, writing in the German Newspaper Die Welt: "Atomic Secrets: The Man Who Knew Too Much."
On the following day, George Jahn wrote a column about it in the Washington Post: "Iran Asks IAEA to Remove Chief Inspector."
Mr. Charlier had publicly complained about the constraints imposed by Tehran on the inspectors.
According to the German newspaper, he is convinced that Iran runs a parallel program aiming at the fabrication of nuclear weapons.
"The IAEA Secretariat takes strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion in the staff reports ... that the Director General of the IAEA decided to remove Mr. Charlier for allegedly raising concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program and concluding that that the purpose of Iran nuclear programme is to construct weapons," Cserveny writes.
"In addition the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy bearing IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian Nuclear Program," he continues.
There is however no doubt that Iran has only exercised its right and ElBaradei his obligations which are clearly stated in the Agreements Between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Article 85 of the text on the Treaty reads:
"The Agreement should provide that:
a) The Director General shall inform the State in writing of the name, qualifications, nationality, grade and such other particulars as may be relevant, of each Agency official he proposes for designation as an inspector for the State;
b) The State shall inform the Director General within 30 days of the receipt of such a proposal whether it accepts the proposal;
c) The Director General may designate each official who has been accepted by the State as one of the inspectors for the State, and shall inform the State of such designations; and
d) The Director General, acting in response to a request by the State or on his own initiative, shall immediately inform the State of the withdrawal of the designation of any official as an inspector for the State..."
Iran has accepted more than 200 U.N. inspectors, a number that is similar to other countries having signed the agreement under the Non Proliferation Treaty.
Allegations of weapons-grade uranium
The report alleged incorrectly that Iranians have produced weapons-grade uranium in Natanz.
Under a satellite picture of the Natanz site, one reads "Iran is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade using a 164-machine centrifuge cascade at this facility in Natanz. Iran claims it will have 3,000 centrifuges at this site by next spring."
Weapons-grade Uranium is a term used to describe uranium enriched to 90 percent or more in the uranium 235 isotope.
However, Iranian have enriched their uranium to a low level of only a few percent, compatible with enrichment required for fuelling their nuclear reactors.
Moreover their work was described in a report provided to the IAEA board of governors by Dr. ElBaradei.
On September 14, the IAEA Board derestricted the latest report on the implementation of safeguards in Iran.
Polonium-210
The report alleges that Iran has covertly produced Polonium-210, an isotope which in conjunction with Beryllium provides the neutron flux needed to initiate a chain reaction.
This statement is misleading because, as pointed out by Cserveny, Iran has no legal obligation to declare its activity related to Polonium-210 production to the IAEA.
Spent fuel from light-water reactors
The House Report alleges that Iranians could use the plutonium contained in the spent fuel of their reactors in construction at Busher to fabricate nukes."Extracting plutonium from a light water reactor's (LWR) spent fuel rods would produce weapons-grade fuel in less time than spinning unenriched UF6 in centrifuges.
- states the report on pages 10 and 11.
Spent fuel from the LWR Russia is building for Iran in the city of Bushehr could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for 30 weapons per year if the fuel rods were diverted and reprocessed.
Spent fuel from the LWRs that EU-3 states are proposing to give Iran as
part of a new diplomatic agreement probably could be used to produce a similar
amount of plutonium,"
The statement is simply false.
The capture of a single neutron by an uranium-238 nucleus leads eventually to the formation of a plutonium-239 nucleus, an isotope suitable for the construction of nuclear weapon.
However, in a light-water reactor operated for electricity production, a significant percentage of plutonium-239 absorb a neutron and transmute into plutonium-240, the presence of which complicates the fabrication of nukes because of high radiation and more importantly because it may lead to premature fission.
A clandestine enrichment program
"Iran has conducted a clandestine uranium enrichment program for nearly two decades in violation of its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement, and despite its claims to the contrary, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons," alleges the Report.
In his series of articles published in The Hindu, "The Persian Puzzle: Iran and the invention of a nuclear crisis," Siddharth Varadarajan has shown how the idea of a clandestine program is an invention without legal basis.
Click here: http://www.payvand.com/news/05/sep/1216.html . In it, Varadarajan argued:
Dubious claims and explanations for Iran's nuclear activities
Thirdly, the agreement to suspend enrichment, which Iran reached with the EU-3 at Paris last November, clearly states that the E3/EU recognize that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation.
"Aside from Iran's lack of uranium deposits, Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for electricity production appears doubtful in light of its large oil and natural gas reserves. Iran's natural gas reserves are the second largest in the world and the energy industry estimates that Iran flares enough natural gas annually to generate electricity equivalent to the output of four Bushehr reactors," the Report claims.
"Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago."
"It is absolutely incredible that the very same players who made those statements then are making completely the opposite ones now. Do they remember that they said this? Because the Iranians sure remember that they said it," said Joseph Cirincione, a non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"This is like prewar Iraq all over again. You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector and current president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
"This is a very troubling instance here, this report, of U.S. policymakers in my view trying to push the intelligence community to find evidence that they believe supports their suspicions and their end policy goals," said Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association in Washington.
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