The Guardian (London) - Final Edition November 20, 2004
Allegations put EU deal with Iran in jeopardy
By Ian Traynor and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
A breakthrough deal between Iran and the EU aimed at defusing an international crisis over Tehran's alleged nuclear ambitions was thrown into uncertainty last night when diplomats said Iran was rushing to process feed material for bomb-grade uranium.
Under last weekend's agreement, Iran is to freeze all aspects of its uranium enrichment programme from Monday. But citing sources within the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, diplomatic sources said Iran was "going all out" ahead of Monday to process uranium concentrate into uranium hexafluoride, the gas that is spun through centrifuge machines to produce nuclear fuel or warhead material.
The Iranian move, if confirmed, could wreck the agreement and set the scene for a stormy meeting of the IAEA's 35-strong board next week.
Iran said the suggestion was "a lie". But diplomats monitoring its nuclear programme said the activity was a clear act of bad faith.
The development could also play into the hands of hawks in Washington who are keen to secure economic sanctions or even military action against Tehran.
The US drumbeat for regime change has only intensified with the success of European efforts to broker a diplomatic agreement with Iran. Administration hawks dismiss the agreement as a sham.
This week the Bush administration said Iran was actively trying to develop a missile delivery system for a nuclear bomb, an assertion that raised fresh doubts about the credibility of its intelligence.
The outgoing secretary of state, Colin Powell, told reporters: "We are talking about information that says they not only have missiles but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together."
The remarks provoked sharp criticism from abroad, deepening the divide between Europe and America about how to deal with Tehran's nuclear programme.
The new rhetoric immediately aroused suspicions about Mr Powell's motives, fuelling suspicion that Washington was intent on sabotaging the EU deal.
"At this point, the Iranians do not have any nuclear weapons, so it's impossible to use the missiles with nuclear weapons," the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said.
Although missile experts believe it is likely that Tehran would harbour plans to couple its Shahab missiles with nuclear warheads, Mr Powell's claims were based on a single, unverified source.
The intelligence had been provided to Mr Powell at a cabinet briefing, and relied heavily on 1,000 pages of documents and drawings supplied to US intelligence from a single "walk-in" source, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The source did not mention other aspects of Iran's nuclear programme, press reports said. Instead, it focuses on modifications to Iran's long-range missiles, which are capable of striking Israel.
It was also unclear how the source obtained the documentation, or whether there was any connection to Iranian exile groups which have generated a steady flow of allegations about Tehran's nuclear programmes, precisely with the hopes of provoking harsher sanctions against the regime.
Yesterday the National Council of Resistance of Iran accused Tehran of using advanced laser technology to make bomb-grade uranium. It also repeated Mr Powell's warnings about modifications to Iran's missiles.
"The problem that the US intelligence community has right now is that a non-trivial portion of the intelligence failure on Iraq was the inability to identify disinformation," said John Pike, a missile expert at Global Security.org. "There would have to be concerns within the US intelligence community that it is too good to be true."
Several commentators in Washington were surprised that Mr Powell had not demonstrated more caution with the report, given his previous experience with faulty intelligence.
Mr Powell's reputation was severely tarnished after it emerged that he had relied on flawed intelligence on Saddam Hussein's arsenal during a speech to the United Nations on the eve of the Iraq war.
His latest remarks were delivered en route to an economic conference in Chile. He told reporters that Iran's nuclear aspirations were well known, and that it was actively working on a delivery system.
The comments were unscripted, and apparently caught the White House by surprise. But the timing - days after Britain, France and Germany persuaded Iran to freeze its enrichment programme - were widely seen as an attack on the European diplomatic approach to Tehran.
© Copyright 2004, Guardian Newspapers Limited
