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US
story on Although the international
media has accepted as gospel truth the recent THE storyline that
dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility
in late September was the official assertion that But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility. In reporting the story
in that way, journalists were relying entirely on the testimony of 'senior
administration officials' who briefed them at the G20 summit in Later in the briefing, however, the official said 'we believe', rather than 'we learned', in referring to that claim, indicating that it is only an inference rather than being based on hard intelligence. The official refused to explain how US analysts had arrived at that conclusion, but an analysis by the defence intelligence consulting firm IHS Jane's of a satellite photo of the site taken on 26 September said there is a surface-to-air missile system located at the site. Since surface-to-air
missiles protect many Iranian military sites, however, their presence
at the The official said the administration had organised an intelligence briefing on the facility for the IAEA during the summer on the assumption that the Iranians might 'choose to disclose the facility themselves'. But he offered no explanation for the fact that there had been no briefing given to the IAEA or anyone else until 24 September - three days after the Iranians disclosed the existence of the facility. A major question surrounding
the official story is why the Barack Obama administration had not done
anything - and apparently had no plans to do anything - with its intelligence
on the Iranian facility at In effect, the answer was no, there had been no plan for briefing the IAEA or anyone. News media played up
the statement by the senior administration official that But what was not reported
was that he meant only that the The official in question acknowledged that the analysts had not been able to identify it as an enrichment facility for a long time. In the 'very early stage of construction,' said the official, 'a facility like this could have multiple uses.' Intelligence analysts had to 'wait until the facility had reached the stage of construction where it was undeniably intended for use as a centrifuge facility,' he explained. The fact that the administration
had made no move to brief the IAEA or other governments on the site
before A former Also misleading was
the official briefing's characterisation of the intelligence assessment
on the purpose of the enrichment plant. The briefing concluded that
the According to the former
It also implies that the senior administration official briefing the press was deliberately portraying the new enrichment facility in more menacing terms than the actual intelligence assessment. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s offer the day after the denunciation of the site by US, British and French leaders to allow IAEA monitoring of the plant will make it far more difficult to argue that it was meant to serve military purposes. The circumstantial
evidence suggests that The Iranian government
is well aware of US capabilities for monitoring from satellite photographs
any site in The specific timing of the Iranian letter, however, appears to be related to the upcoming talks between Iran and the P5+1 - China, France, Britain, Russia, the United States and Germany - and an emerging Iranian strategy of smaller back-up nuclear facilities that would assure continuity if Natanz were attacked. The Iranian announcement
of that decision on 14 September coincided with a statement by the head
of The day after the As satellite photos
of the site show, the enrichment facility at The pro-administration newspaper Kayhan quoted an 'informed official' as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in 2004 that it had to do something about the threat of attack on its nuclear facilities 'repeatedly posed by the western countries'. The government newspaper
called the existence of the second uranium enrichment plant 'a winning
card' that would increase Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy. *Third World Resurgence No. 228/229, August-September 2009, pp 41-42 |
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