Iran Admits More Nuclear Activity

Investigators for the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said in a draft report to be made public today that Iran had acknowledged experimenting with plutonium more recently than was previously known and had yet to fill in crucial information about its efforts to obtain sophisticated centrifuges.

Plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs. The centrifuges that Iran was attempting to acquire can be used to purify uranium for civilian purposes such as electricity generation, but also for the more intensive processing used to manufacture weapons-grade fuel.

The report, to be delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors by Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt, catalogs questions that remain about Iran’s nuclear program. A copy of the report was obtained by several news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times.

Iran has come under intense scrutiny over the last two years after a dissident group revealed that Tehran had taken serious steps toward setting up a uranium enrichment program. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and some other Western countries believe that it seeks the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran should have informed the IAEA of any activity related to uranium enrichment, regardless of its purpose.

A senior Western diplomat familiar with the report, which is marked “highly confidential,” said it raised once again the question of whether Iran was disclosing everything.

“The IAEA now has to decide whether there is a pattern of dissembling by Iran and whether they need to take more serious steps before the September board meeting,” the diplomat said.

In Washington, State Department officials offered no immediate response to the leaked report. “We look forward to discussing the report with other members of the IAEA board,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The head of Iran’s delegation to the Board of Governors, Sirous Nasseri, said the report signaled that the IAEA’s investigation was winding down and that only a few questions were unanswered.

“In every regard the report indicates the amount of work done between us and the agency in the last months.... We feel the report implies that the questions are winding down.... It’s tantamount to a final 10 yards down the field.”

“One thing is clear, this dossier is about to close once and for all,” Nasseri said, adding that two years ago the questions covered scores of pages.

The three-page report highlights three areas of inquiry. Previously, Iran had said it had last experimented with plutonium in 1993. However, after more discussions with the IAEA, Iran acknowledged that it had processed some plutonium in 1995 and again in 1998. Iran confirmed that in a letter dated May 26, 2005, Goldschmidt’s report says.

Tehran has now given the IAEA access to some plutonium so it can be tested.

A second open area involves Iran’s dealings with the black market network run by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and the exact offer he made. The U.N. agency has repeatedly requested information about Iran’s initial contacts with Khan’s organization in 1987.

The agency has also requested shipping documents from the early 1990s that would reveal how many consignments of enrichment-related equipment Iran received and the contents of each shipment. There are several inconsistencies between information Iran has given in the past and more recent documents, and the agency believes that if it could see the original shipping papers many questions could be answered.

“The agency has asked to see the original supporting documentation of the two Iranian representatives who participated in the meetings with the intermediaries. No positive reply has been received thus far,” the report says.

Iran’s Nasseri said his country would cooperate with IAEA investigators. “We will continue to be helpful in any manner we can,” he said. “We have delivered to the agency immediately anything we have been able to locate.”

IAEA officials praised Iran for sticking by its pledge to maintain a moratorium on nuclear activities while it continues talks with three European Union countries seeking a long-term halt to its uranium enrichment activities. In comments to the media at the opening of the Board of Governors meeting this week, Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei lauded Iran for respecting “its commitment with regard to the suspension of the fuel cycle activity.”

However, in his address to the board, ElBaradei also called on the country to be more forthcoming and allow access to two sensitive sites: Lavisan-Shian and Parchin, a military complex. Parchin is a center of Iran’s munitions industry, and the U.S. and other Western countries suspect that Iranian scientists there may have experimented with the kind of high-powered explosives that might be used to detonate a nuclear bomb.

Agency investigators who visited Parchin were given only brief access to the huge installation and were able to look at only one or two areas.