Spinning the IAEA's Report on Iran

On this side of the pond, the New York Times and the Washington Post focused their reporting about the release of the IAEA's inspection report of Iran's nuclear facilities (.pdf file) on the fact that Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of the latest UN security resolution against it which is supposed to strengthen the US administration's calls for a second, more heavy-handed resolution.

The Guardian, however, offers a different persepctive:

US Iran intelligence 'is incorrect'

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.
[...]
At the heart of the debate are accusations - spearheaded by the US - that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations said.

"They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.

One particularly contentious issue was records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran.

In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forged, and there are still reservations within the IAEA about its authenticity, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate in the agency.

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."

So, once again, there appears to be an intelligence failure on the part of the US agencies. That ought to set off warning bells especially since, despite repeated assurances from the Bush administration that it is not planning attacks on Iran, shades of pre-war Iraq are so obviously similar.

As reported again today, this time the Bush administration will not only face opposition from countries like China and Russia which are not supportive of further sanctions, it will face its track record on the abuse of intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war. That skepticism will now increase as a result of this latest round of intelligence blunders.