Disinformation flies as US raises Iran bar

A new report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is about to be released and US "pre-emptive" diplomacy, aimed at preventing an IAEA "clean bill of health" that could derail Washington's effort for a new round of UN sanctions on Iran, is at full throttle - with the timely help of disinformation.

Setting the bar unusually high, the US envoy at the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, has warned that unless Iran "confesses" about its "past work on weapons designs and weaponization and the role of the Iranian military", international efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff will be "doomed".

Washington's brand new benchmark comes in the wake of a spate of US media reports that the US has "shared new intelligence" with the IAEA that corroborates American allegations of past Iranian nuclear proliferation activities. According to the New York Times, the US decided to "turn over intelligence data" and allow the IAEA privileged access for "divulging confidential information" by reversing "longstanding refusal to show the data, citing the need to protect intelligence sources". [1]

A widely published report by Associated Press cites diplomats as saying that the material forwarded to the IAEA over the past two weeks expands on previous information from the Americans. [2]

But, we learn, the new information pertains to data from the same "stolen laptop" that was the source of the previous information, which was termed unreliable at the time by, among others, David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington. (For more on the laptop story see the author’s The IAEA and the new world order, Asia Times Online, February 3, 2006.)

Six powers to meet Monday on Iran nuclear program

Six major powers are to meet Monday in Washington for fresh talks on how to make Iran give up its contested uranium enrichment activities, a top US diplomat official said Friday.

The State Department's number three Nicholas Burns said foreign ministry officials of the six -- the five UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany -- would review a proposed third UN sanctions resolution against Iran.

"We will review our strategy (launched at the United Nations) in New York, the pace of the resolution," Burns told reporters.

The six powers want Iran to stop enriching uranium, a process which they suspect Tehran aims to use to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only seeking nuclear power for civilian purposes.

Britain's and France's ambassadors to the UN on Thursday formally submitted to the Security Council members the text of a resolution for new sanctions, which they hope to see passed as soon as possible.

The poposed sanctions include economic and trade restrictions and a travel ban against officials involved in the nuclear program.

The five permanent council members are Britain, the United States, France, China and Russia.

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, complained in a recent report that the Islamic Republic had supplied only patchy details of its activities to its inspectors. Raw Story