Iran's 'Nuclear Detonators' Are A CIA Fake

The New York Times' Judith Miller Elaine Sciolino has another 'nuclear Iran' scare story which immediately got picked up by other media:

International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials. As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.
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Although officials would not say how they had obtained the new document, it was first publicly mentioned in an agency report in May as one of 18 documents presented to Iran in connection with suspected nuclear weapons studies. At the time it was described as a “five-page document in English” about experiments with a complex initiation system to detonate a large amount of high explosives and to monitor the detonation with probes. There was no indication that the document was a translation of a much longer, more comprehensive document in Farsi.

The original, Farsi document is described by officials familiar with it as a detailed narrative of experiments aimed at creating a perfectly timed implosion of nuclear material.

Wait a second: Iran, nuclear detonators and a Russian engineer? Where was that about? Oh yeah: "Operation Merlin"

The New York Times piece mentions nothing about the story which James Risen described in his book State of War partly published in The Guardian. But this seems quite related: More